Absolutely Nothing corrected
by ChloeRulz
Summary: Eric surrenders to the pull of his daydream about Sookie and Sookie offers up a confession as she makes it almost come true. Later, she returns from the Fae Realm with a message that mystifies them both.
1. Chapter 1

FIXED VERSION… Sorry folks, I had a problem with Word I didn't know about. For the first group of you who so quickly read this, thanks and sorry… I was alerted by a kind reader and got it straightened out.

Even if one didn't breathe… a sigh was sometimes needed. This one was of disappointment, in the loss of the daydream, in himself for being distracted, and in the same breath disappointment in himself for being disappointed in being distracted. These breathers meant nothing to him in the end. That he was distracted from their gyrations should have meant nothing as well. He was entitled to his own imaginings even in the midst of another fawning and wishfully provocative display from another wishful minion. The woman symbolically grinding her crotch against the pole took his dismissal with a pout and clattered away on shoes that required she had a pole to dance on to even stay upright. She vanished from his perception before she vanished from his vision, excellent as it was.

In a dark flash of vampire speed, Eric Northman retreated into his office, scarcely aware the next woman who, denied a chance to entertain him opted at least to practice. The redhead began her lewd pretense of worship of the tall, smooth, hard, round object in the middle of Fangtasia. Even had it been the one she was wishing it was, he might not have noticed. What he did notice after a moment was the dour look on the face of the woman behind him as Pamela appeared at the door.

"I would ask what's on your mind, but amongst other things, I suck at being polite and making small talk, especially when I know the answer… even without being… a telepath."

The vampire seated at his office in a bar in the backwoods of Louisiana (skip that it was in a one of their major cities – it was still the backwoods in his lifetimes) sighed again, this time with a growl, this time with resignation and vague anger that cloaked affection for the female vampire that stood before him and knew him well. Anyone else able to know him so deeply he would have had to kill by now… but this one… she would meet the True Death for him first. That meant she could live… and give him that covertly tender look of distantly amused pity.

Pamela entered and leaned on the open door. "I don't know which one of us has had enough… you with your mind being in Mississippi, me with your mind being in Mississippi, or the dozen horny fangers who've exhausted themselves twitching their twats while your mind was in Mississippi. Even if you're dead they expect a little more life in you at night, so right now… you're bad for business. … and if you're going to sit there brooding and miserable and pissed at the world… you risk reminding me of Compton and that makes me want to choke."

That comment drew the vampire out of his unpleasant reverie and a cold blue gaze settled on the female vampire standing over him with a knowing pout on her brightly painted lips and low-cut ice-blue blouse. "Well, I can't have that, Pamela, anything that affects your swallowing is bad for business, too."

That drew a cold smile from the female that was a bit more honest in nature. She glanced around to gauge the nearness of anyone who might hear what she said next vs. the music pounding its way through the darkness that was charged with the psychic energies of alcohol, sex, anger, and always, always frustration – especially of late, especially since Sookie Stackhouse had become a greater presence in their lives but not the one that Eric Northman wanted. She wondered if he had bedded any of the fangers here in the last few days or just let them feed him, glamored them up a good fuck, and then sent them on their way to brag that they'd had him.

Satisfied that no one could hear them, she leaned back and pointed to the human woman three tables in from the door, with pert, barely covered breasts, shoulder-length golden blond hair, having a giggle with three dark-haired friends, one of whom was a regular. "I spotted one that one should be close enough if you close your eyes enough and she'll really think you're enjoying yourself."

He considered it, just for a moment, but then glared up at the female vampire he had made and managed a brittle, disregarding smile. "She would still lack the proper scent and I doubt even I could convince a woman I was enjoying myself if I were having sex while holding my nose."

Pam gave a sigh done purely for theatrics. "Why don't you challenge yourself and find out? At least make a show of picking one of them and feeding before they take their hopes and their cash elsewhere. I don't think you'll be on that one-woman diet you're hoping for for a while yet."

Eric shifted slowly upright at that, the briefest of guilty looks on his face but not too brief for Pamela to catch. For a moment, he looked as if he were about to tear her head off but then the frustration he had been containing found another avenue, a look of what would have been exhaustion on a human countenance deepened the long lines of his face, but only for the eyes that had looked upon him for a century. Offering him a vague smile, the female vampire leaned back into the hallway and wagged finger at the buxom blond three tables from the door. She hopped up with a squeal and obeyed without being glamoured. A few steps later, then having been thoroughly glamoured, she stood waiting just inside the office door of Fangtasia, smiling and waving at her friends as she'd been told to do and would do until her human body collapsed from dehydration and exhaustion.

Pam closed the door behind her and sat on the low couch across from Eric Northman's cluttered desk, already relegating the fanger outside to a checked off detail. She had sensed the change in her maker from the moment he had stood up and wondered if she'd gone too far or just far enough. Not sure which yet, she kept her mouth shut and waited as Eric turned to the small closet and began hunting through the collection of spare clothes he kept there. He stripped down to his underwear without a thought of Pam or the dazed blond woman being in the room although he was quite aware both were giving his ass an appreciative stare, even though Pam's current preferences ran elsewhere. Northman was well aware had an ass even a straight man could appreciate without surrendering his manhood, if he were secure enough in it. He came to the desk a few minutes later to sit down, dressed entirely in black, a silk shirt clinging to the long, elegant curves of his chest beneath the jacket and tucked neatly into his trousers. His face, drawn with contemplation and a new kind of frustration, contrasted his outfit's composed lines but there was no trace of anger in his manner and Pam relaxed. She still, however, waited for him to speak. She'd had her moment getting him in here and knew better than to push him further.

"You're right. I'm draining business and not the right way." He managed a thin smile at last but Pam still remained silent and let him come to his own terms in regard to timing. Now that he'd made his mind up to act, she wouldn't have long to wait anyhow. "Do you mind closing?"

"Of course not. What I mind is your being distracted. It's dangerous… for all of us."

"I don't disagree that my concentration has been… challenged the past few days but I need time… to know what the stakes are… to gain the right confidences… to know when to use them."

"Amongst them being Sookie Stackhouse. You know, Eric, you've gotten her into a situation where even I can… imagine… feeling sorry for her."

"I might be using her, Pamela, but at least it's for a goal that'll make things better for us all. It's almost as important to me as settling my own score but I can keep her safe for now and let her come to appreciate it later."

"That's assuming a lot about a human woman who hates you one minute and the next smells like she's watching you in an Old Spice commercial. Save her life one more time, show her what you can do to protect her better than Compton, make her see she needs you, whatever it takes. You can deal with all this shit better if you're not worrying about making her yours and your going to be distracted until she is."

Northman's eyes glazed over slightly, a slight smile fighting to gain access to his lips but ultimately losing. "Credible advice, my dear Pam, but the opposite tactic is more likely to work with Miss Stackhouse."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"I'll let you know if I'm right." The tall vampire stood, stretching his elegant frame to resettle the suit into a perfect fit again. "You were right, I might need my strength." He resumed fussing unnecessarily with his clothing as Pamela waved the young blond woman forward; spellbound, she smiled up at Eric Northman. Her eyes took on a deeper glaze seconds later and she moaned and gasped. The scent of her arousal filled the room and her throat vibrated with a low groan as the vampire deftly removed her bra, tore through the side straps of the thong on either side of her hips and pulled it out from beneath her short black skirt, at least giving her the pleasure of dragging them slowly across her sex. The red thong was dripping and dark as he freed it and tossed it across the room with her brassiere. He leaned down and took her lips gently then stood up and stared down at her from a good foot above. "You were the best fuck I've had in four hundred years. I was privileged to have had you come … in here."

Pamela rolled her eyes at the mildly amused but distracted smile on his face. Northman's joke was for her, to tell her to relax, that he was still his clever self. The human woman standing next to him was far to gone to understand the entendre. Her eyes swam even though they were still on his face. "I'm so glad. You've made me feel like no human man ever has… ever could. I want to repay you, Sire. Drink me. Have me. Anyway that might please you."

Pam reapplied her lipstick. Anyone who thought she was whore had never met a true human fang banger. She twisted her lips to evenly spread the lipstick, watching as Eric arched his head back (purely in a polite show for the dazed fanger in his hands) clicked his fangs into place, and drove them into the young woman's bared neck. She whined slightly and took the only real pleasure she had that night from running her hands over the vampire's chest and stomach, stopping to spread them flat as she felt the muscles there clutch and release as he drank. The smile was still on her face when she lost consciousness. Eric took a few sips more, felt her heart slow just enough to be detected, and then picked her up and placed her gently on the couch, licking her wounds enough to close them but not enough to let them heal completely. He had no doubt she wanted the marks. "B Negative. If she's inclined you might have her the next time she comes in."

"I'll make taking a drink from her the admission price for her next visit with you, because you know damn well she'll be back now that's she's the best you've had in four hundred years." Pamela's smile faded. "If anyone asks, I don't know where you're going. But be careful when you get there… and more important, send a little of that B Negative up to your brain."

Eric Northman held the worried blue eyes of his progeny for a long moment then offered her the thinnest of smiles and walked out. Moments later he was outside of Fangtasia altogether and then he was above it, headed through the darkness toward the sovereign state of Mississippi. If he couldn't have the last part of his daydream, perhaps he could at least have part of the first.

/

For the first time ever, Sookie Stackhouse hated that she couldn't read a vampire's mind. Wherever the hell Bill Compton was, had she been able to, she would have been able to pull the truth out of him, know for herself that he truthfully did no longer want her. She turned over on the bed in her room in Jackson, reaching for the remote to turn on the tv and take a break from the string of angry questions that had started screaming through her head when Bill had called her and told her he was ending things. She needed some peace and quiet, some time to reflect. Maybe he had said something in a way that she was supposed to connect with, offered her a clue that he was lying… offered her a clue that he was in over his head, that he was trying to pro-.

The tapping at the window made her jump. Sookie rolled her eyes at her own reaction and turned, expecting to find the branches of a tree rattling against the clear panes of glass… what she saw made her heart jump and then pound for a moment but the alarm was soon replaced by dull amazement and a dazed curiosity that overtook her tortured thoughts.

Eric Northman was outside the window, his posture that of someone standing on any front porch. Except there wasn't one. They were four stories up, tall enough that while a tree tapping on the window would have made sense, it was, in reality, the finger of a vampire that was growing a little impatient. Her jaw hanging, Sookie unfolded her legs and pulled her pink robe more tightly around herself as she approached the window, wide-eyed as she reached for the latch and released it.

"My God. You can… you're flying."

"Technically, I'm hovering… and waiting for you to invite me in. You don't own this place but it is your room."

Sookie Stackhouse brought her chin up, getting over her initial shock at the bizarre arrival of her visitor. She stepped back and pulled the window open farther, her blond hair lifting in the breeze that entered as she did. "Please come in." She watched in tired fascination as a six-foot-four vampire stepped on to the windowsill of her hotel room and dropped down to the floor, affected by gravity once again, and now she knew - of his own choice. Her elfin face kinked up with a sudden curiosity. "Why do you have a car? I mean… if you can… I can't even believe I'm saying this… if you can… fly, what's the point?"

"It takes a great deal of energy to do so. We usually reserve it for special occasions and needs but it becomes easier with age."

"Oh". Sookie's lips twitched downward. "So which is this, a special need or a special occasion?"

Northman looked away from her and then looked around, sitting down in a chair near the small desk. "Neither this time. I wanted to know if you'd made any progress. If I couldn't stop you at least I could take advantage of your efforts. Whether I like it or not Compton is my responsibility as Sheriff, linked to him as you are, that extends to you as well."

Tired as she was, mind-blind to vampires as she was, aggravated and frustrated by Eric Northman as she usually was - she didn't miss the fact that Eric Northman had answered her without looking up or even in her direction. She let a sigh of frustration past her lips and sat down on the bed. Not now… not now, not when she'd just gotten that fucking call from Bill. The last thing she needed was Eric Northman to learn that Bill had let her go, whether she had had the chance to believe him or not. The last thing she needed to add to her grief was this. Alcide… He'd called him probably. He was in debt to Eric or Eric had just felt what she was feeling.

SHIT.

"You know, Eric, that might be a little true but if you were so busy that you couldn't come with me and sent Alcide, for which I do thank you – he's a real gentleman, you have my phone number. You could have called me or left a message or called Alcide if you didn't want me to know you were askin'. So as for your being here, I woulda' thought someone your age… could lie better."

His head lifted at that, a smile on his face when he did meet her eyes, although a very small one. "Perhaps I just can't lie to you."

"You lied to me pretty well in Dallas when I sucked that silver out of your chest."

"You were under a lot of strain. I probably would have failed otherwise."

Sookie scooted back farther onto the bed. "Not now, Eric, please. I know why you're here. You could feel me when I got that call from Bill, how much it hurt me, and you could do that because of what you tricked me Dallas. Before you say one more word, I want you to know I don't believe him. Not yet. He asked me to marry him; he meant it; we were making plans and then he was taken. He didn't just leave. He was taken and now some big pile of vampire bullshit is making him say and do things he doesn't want to."

"Or… he's come to realize he loves you enough to let you go."

"If that were the case, he'd tell me in person, tell me that he'd made a mistake."

"Are you sure?"

"Do you ever get tired of asking me that about Bill?" Sookie snapped, her arms folding tightly.

"Do you ever get tired of not being able to honestly answer it, to me or to yourself?" He was looking at her then, his crystalline-blue gaze sending a needle of ice through her gut via her own dark eyes. She closed them and looked away, not seeing him until he sat down on the side of the bed farthest from her. "I knew you were in pain but I didn't come here to talk about Compton. I came here to warn you about who he might be working for or … is being forced to obey."

Sookie's gaze narrowed at that and she sat up straighter on the bed, "So you do think someone could be forcing him to-."

"Vampires have been around for thousands of years, Miss Stackhouse. If he's gotten caught up in something he can't control, he'll have to do what he's told and I seriously doubt he's got the brains to find a loophole if there is one. For our own survival, we've been forced to create a society with rigid rules and harsh punishments, especially when we had to live in secret. One single wrong human learning about us truly existing could have sent them into a frenzy to kill us all. It's only been in the past ten years where leaders like Godric thought the human race could even begin to accept our existence, even with the advent of True Blood. In any time before now, any era, where you humans were busy slaughtering yourselves over imaginary gods, being manipulated by madmen, or unable to settle a simple land dispute without bloodshed – we would have been annihilated in short order. Our rules, our society, however harsh, ensured the survival of both our kinds but the type of obedience it demands is absolute, especially from a vampire as young and inexperienced as Compton. ."

Sookie sat back again, absorbing what she'd been told. Despite the fact that Eric's words had been a very clear insult to the man she loved, she knew in the back of her mind that Eric was right on more than a few levels regarding Bill. For a vampire, he was young. In the bizarre world of vampire politics, he was inexperienced. Eric could make political hay with the best of them from what she'd seen and even when it seemed like he was the one being manipulated, she always had the feeling there was something going on that only Eric was privy to for the moment. She sat silently, studying the dusty white bedcover, looking up after several moments to see the corner of Eric Northman's mouth trembling in an effort not to smile, obviously because he'd gotten away with the insult to Bill Compton without a word from her usually hair-trigger mouth. She sighed and swung her legs off the bed on the side where he sat, one very long, black-clad leg folded beneath him, pacing a tiny distance back and forth. "I'm not blind, Eric. I know that you can look at Bill like Bill looks at Jessica but that doesn't mean I shouldn't care for him… BUT… I didn't get into a relationship with him so I could get caught up in all this crazy vampire shit. If it were… you I could understand if it… if I'd found myself… involved… Get that look off your face, damn it!"

He did, immediately, to his own surprise. "I'm sorry. Just the… ah… thought of you entertaining that involvement was a bit… overwhelming."

"A thousand years old and the thought of being involved with a backwater waitress whose only claim to fame is being a better busybody than anyone has a right to be makes you feel overwhelmed? If I were in anywhere near the right mood, I'd have a damn good laugh at your expense, Eric Northman. Your either a better liar than I accused you of being a few minutes ago or there's something going on here that no one's telling me about. Oh, what a surprise that'd be." She stood up but kept her eyes on him as she uttered her last words, stiffening inside when she saw not one hint of reaction on the face of the blond vampire watching her. If anything, his calculated non-expression was even more controlled and that in itself told her more than he would have wanted her to know. He seemed to sense her awareness of that fact after a moment and looked away. He needed to divert her, perhaps divert himself even more so. He remembered his own selfish reasons for coming here, his own addled but somehow irresistible hope that if he couldn't have the last part of his daydream about her… yet… he might have part of the first. He'd lived a thousand years now (at least had some form of life); he could wait whatever time it took for Sookie Stackhouse to come to her senses, to have that night where she was looming over him, straddling him, ready to take him and enjoy his surrender as much as his flesh. The memory of the dream shot through him while he was in her very real, now very puzzled presence and he flinched back from her direction slightly, as if he were indeed, minutely, momentarily… overwhelmed. His groin had begun to ache, testing his control.

Whatever she was, whatever Compton had said to her, whatever pain she was in – she was still Sookie. She stepped forward involuntarily when he uncharacteristically snapped away from her, folding slightly into himself and looking away, her base compassion undoing her mood. "Eric, is something wrong? I don't think I've ever seen you twitch like that even when you'd been shot."

"Don't you mean… even when I shot you?"

"I didn't exactly want to go there but that's not the point anyway. Telepathic or not, I know you're holding something back because you look like you're trying not to look like you're holding something back and I don't care if you're a million years old you're not fooling anyone. So, what is going on here? Who's this vampire you think Bill is working for or obeying or whatever? I'm guessin' he's older and higher up than you, even?"

Caught out, perhaps because he'd unconsciously wanted to be, Eric answered her slowly and quietly. "You are correct, by two thousand years, in fact, in terms of his age. As to his rank, Ed-," Northman's voice suddenly trailed off and he looked away from the fixated gaze of the dark-eyed telepath, suddenly as uneasy as if she could read his mind. He looked around the Spartan room and was tempted to leave just as he had come. The window was still open… And in the next instant, he knew that would be foolish. Regardless of whether he told Sookie one more word about Russell Edgington, if he bolted now she would only assume something that would make her behavior far more unpredictable in the next few days, when he would need her to react as if she held not a trace of trust in him, as if his betrayal of her was as deep and cutting as it seemed, as if she meant nothing to him but to be another show of fealty to a madman. He could save them both and destroy Edgington but only if she had no doubts that he had turned on her utterly and completely, that his risking his life to save her in the past was now something he would look back on and consider foolish and weak. He only hoped she would understand once it was all over… if they survived.

Sookie Stackhouse gave her guest ten more seconds to collect his thoughts, the second ones he had apparently begun to have after he started telling her what she wanted to know and then cut himself off. She took a step toward him and he remained still this time, sitting on the edge of the bed and having steeled himself for the reiterations about to take place. He looked, she suddenly realized, tired – almost as tired as she was herself but for a vampire, the evening was young. She took a breath to demand of him again what kind of enemy they were up against, what she was supposed to do, etc. when she realized that she'd fail if she confronted him. While it was only a shadow of the grief she'd seen there, the look on his long, and she couldn't help but admit, elegant face was much the same as when he'd confronted his Maker on the roof of a hotel in Dallas, imploring him not to go to the Tue Death, begging him until he was dismissed in a way he could not refuse, left only with the comfort that she would watch over Godric as the sun consumed him. Godric's final, bizarre (at the moment) plea that she take care of Eric Northman suddenly came back to her and the spirit of that was, she realized, what had silenced her now.

Not quite believing and certainly not trusting herself, she suddenly settled down beside him on the bed, not touching him but within arm's reach if she opted to do so. "Eric, I don't know what it is you are or aren't about to tell me but I know this – if you and I have any kind of trust in each other at all this is the time for it to be important. Whether you like it or not, no matter what he said to me, I still consider myself Bill's until I'm told to my face otherwise, and even then, no matter how much you might want me – I cannot fathom being …involved… with a vampire again anytime soon. I admit, I owe you for saving me from the wolf, for sending Alcide to guard me, for letting me have a chance to save Bill or walk away from him on my own terms but I am going to trust you that you're not doing this just because you want to lay claim to me if I have lost Bill. There's a difference between someone being grateful and someone being in… in… involved because they want to be involved. Are we clear about that?"

Eric Northman was clear about a great number of things, what he was now being told amongst them. Not trusting his voice for a moment, he merely met her eyes and nodded then took a psychologically necessary breath. "I am clear about all of that, Sookie Stackhouse… and let me assure you that because you are a woman who wishes that made clear it only makes you more worthy of my involvement. When and where I was born, women were not merely slaves and concubines or without respect for their will or without rank. You would have made an excellent shield maid, battling at my side, sharing victories, sharing revenge after a defeat, sharing a warm stack of furs by the fi-."

"Eric!" She grimaced but suddenly, fractionally she smiled. "… and cooking your meals, and cleaning up after drunk Viking parties, and going out in the cold to feed the horses…".

"Actually, the horses often stayed inside with us."

"Well, at least they're cleaner than Maenads." She rolled her eyes and sighed softly to herself, feeling Northman's gaze, which hadn't left her, intensify and his lips twist with disdain.

"Compton still hasn't arranged for that to be dealt with? Were you mine, Sookie, your home-."

"Eric, not now… please. I'm not yours. I don't know that I'm anybody's and the house will get taken care of. After that, there won't be any maenads allowed in there for the rest of my life."

"… or horses?"

A smile snapped the corners of her mouth for a moment. "No, no horses either. " Sookie sat quietly for a moment. If she were to learn anything from him, she'd have to get him to trust her a little more. Sookie debated for a long moment, during which they sat in an oddly companionable silence, about whether she was using Eric or not if she pursued her next line of questioning but the truth was that she did have some curiosity about who he had been and if he did open up more, then she would be in a better position to help all of them – a position he likely ddn't want her to be in… but she was here already and she had a mission and that was something Eric the Viking and Eric the Vampire and Eric the Sheriff would certainly understand. Shouldering through her bout on conscience she squirmed herself back against the headboard and looked down at the tall, powerful, and now strangely quiet vampire seated near the end of the bed.

"I guess you let the horses in because of the cold."

Northman's pale eyes suddenly widened as he stared down and across at her, as if some piece of a puzzle, long lost, had surfaced and fallen into place, as if there was some unknown boundary he was welcoming her across. Why that frightened and pleased her at the same time she wasn't sure but if she'd entered into this line of conversation to make Northman feel more trusting of her, she seemed to have succeeded on the first try. For a moment the centuries had fallen away from his gaze and then it drifted away from her, back to the open window. "I came from a royal clan, Miss Stackhouse. We had a very large dwelling when I grew up. We could house the animals and ourselves without much inconvenience and their body heat was a welcome contribution in winter."

Sookie nodded. "That makes sense. It 's funny. I never thought of Vikings having anything but winter. I guess that's stupid. If you didn't have spring and summer, no animals would be born, you couldn't have grown food and saved it to eat."

Eric turned back to face her, his eyes warmer and tainted with more human emotion than she could ever recall seeing in them. "Life was never easy but it was what we were accustomed to, and in the height of summer the men would focus on building ships, on exploration, not everything was about mead and fighting."

Sookie smiled and felt herself relaxing a bit more, her goal of getting him to talk just to get more out of him about their own present situation had suddenly fallen much farther to the wayside. She wanted to know more about the vampire before her, back when he'd been a mere man – and not all that mere at that, given she'd just learned he'd been royalty. No wonder he'd looked so at home on a throne, no wonder that that throne hadn't looked as ridiculous as she might have imagined if she'd just heard about it and not seen it occupied. She shifted back and stretched her legs out. "Is this the part where you lecture me on who really discovered America?"

A genuine smile moved across Eric Northman's face, warming his eyes again for a far longer moment. "There are archaeological settlements I can take you to that prove they did, Sookie Stackhouse. Mr. Columbus was just in the position to assume bragging rights and as I recall, he missed the entire continent and first landed somewhere in the Bahamas."

Sookie felt a giggle surface. God, how long had it been since she laughed even the tiniest bit. She bit the inside of her lip and for a moment reflected how much Bill would hate to see her now, laying on a bed that Eric Northman sat at the foot of, making her laugh – and in the next instant she didn't care because she didn't know if he still loved her or not, and because wherever he was, he'd been in bed with that God-awful Lorena. For the moment, she opted to stay in the moment, and for this moment, she was comfortable and certainly safe in the presence of a thousand year old Viking vampire who was providing her a history lesson she never would have imagined possible. "All right, I'll give you that. You had springs and summers, were just fine housed up with the horses—".

"… and goats."

"…and goats, and your people were explorers, too." Sookie took a slow breath and locked her eyes on the blond vampire's. 'It was all so long ago but I guess you remember it like it was yesterday. When you were turned, it must have fixed up your brain so that your memories don't fade, is that right?"

Northman nodded. "What vestige of humanity we retain – it's crucial for that. Even though humans… were… easy prey, we still needed to be able to move amongst them, to understand them, to hide, manipulate their politics, to motivate their desires."

Sookie's gaze narrowed slightly when he finished but there was no trace of wistful foreplay in his words and a look of controlled longing still creased the fine lines at the corners of his eyes, framing a distant gaze that she remembered wearing all too well in the months after her Gran had been murdered, that Eric Northman wore it for a life a thousand years in the past told her how powerful and how unfailing a vampire's memory must be. Biting her lip, ignoring the little voice inside her that tried to warn her about "vampire shit" (that by now must have shouted itself hoarse anyway) she suddenly rolled to her side and reached out to the pat the space next to her on the bed but still an arm's length away.

Eric Northman sat frozen on the side of the king size bed, not quite sure, for the first time in a millennium what he should do when faced with a woman inviting him to lie beside her. He knew nothing was about to happen, save for an acknowledgment of mutual grief that spanned that vast amount of time… and much to his own surprise, at the moment, he wanted nothing more.

While she had sensed his long buried feelings, not smelled the wind of the North Sea and the tang of salt it always left in one's hair, this was the Sookie in the first part of his daydream back in Fangtasia, the one he had (to his own internal accusations of foolishness) come here to seek if only in some small way. …And for now she was the one he wanted more than the one who subsequently, in his dream, tossed him onto the bed and seized him with her powerful thighs and caressed him with her hair and lips. Shaking away that Sookie in favor of the modestly dressed real one in a silky pink robe, he slid the jacket from his shoulders and stretched himself out slowly onto the bed, exactly where she had indicated and no closer. Regardless of his suddenly chaste intention, the next memory that surfaced was the one where he had laid down with the first woman who had ever taken him between her legs and then taken him completely as he lay stunned and sprawled on pile of furs. He dismissed her memory before a smile that would cause Sookie to have second thoughts came to his lips. Instead, he rested his head on his hand and waited.

He didn't need to wait long; this was Sookie Stackhouse after all. Very little kept her from speaking her mind. "You told me about you and Godric and hunting those weres and that was World War II. Was that the worst thing you ever saw or when was?"

"In terms of the world, Ms. Stackhouse or in terms of Eric Northman and all the men he's been in a thousand years?" His voice had dropped an octave, just shy of the voice he'd used to offer her passionate, primal sex on her front porch.

Sookie hoped like hell that the small, involuntary, and potentially disloyal shiver that had just gone through her was deep enough that even a thousand year old vampire couldn't see it. She stiffened herself and shrugged against the headboard, "Both."

"I'll make you a deal then. You tell me why you are focusing on such negative things when I could tell you about the beautiful things just as easily?"

She looked down at him then, considering her answer. "My Gran was a real history buff. She drove Bill crazy about his time during the Civil War. I learned a lot from her about what people went through in the past, how hard it was just to get through a normal day even just a hundred years ago… and then you'd add something like a war or a famine or some terrible sickness but somehow those folks survived and it made 'em stronger. It makes me think that maybe I'll get through all the terrible stuff I've been around lately."

Her answer drew a long silence from the vampire, long enough that the telepath took her eyes from the pale wall and turned to look at Eric Northman with a frown that revealed her frustration when she was around him, the frustration that came from her suspicion that there was more humanity left in him than he could admit. He met her gaze when he became aware of it, tensing when he saw the confused compassion it held. He looked away as he drew himself up to sit beside her, no closer, but with his own back against the wide headboard. "Not to mention that those people in the past you drew inspiration from were long dead – and silent except for what their story told."

Sookie turned to look at him then, smiling. "Exactly. Words in a book, a voice on tv… and now I've got vampires, too. I can hear the stories first hand without all the noise."

Northman met her gaze steadily, steeled himself to open himself to this human he never imagined could exist. "If that's the case then, I'll tell you about the worst times of the world, Miss Stackhouse, as I saw them, inspire you if I can but there's not much more I can tell you in terms of the worst for Eric Northman. For that… you were there."

Her lips parted slightly when the words left his lips and she raised the back of her fingers to her mouth. "I'm sorry. I didn't think… I… I thought you'd just tell me about the Black Plague or the Holocaust or some battle you were in."

A slight touch of the securely smug Eric she was accustomed to return to the pained gaze of the blond vampire. "I did offer both the world's demons and my own."

Sookie felt the blush come up her face for two reasons – he had and she had wanted to know – had wanted to know him better and for the sake of knowing, not for the sake of her hope to get his guard down so he would tell her more about what threat they were facing, about who he suspected, about who was behind the clutch of corrupted weres involved in Bill's disappearance. She knew the blush had no chance in hell of being missed by him – a surge of blood to her face while a vampire watched her from two feet away. She needed to find a way to justify it to him and to herself. "You did. You're right. I'm sorry I brought all that back but I didn't mean to at all."

"I've had this existence for a thousand years, Ms. Stackhouse. You were there when the most important person in it decided to end his own existence and de-."

"Eric, like I said, I'm sorry. You've lived so-."

"Allow me to finish, Sookie. … to end his own existence and deny me the choice to go meet the True Death with him. I only wanted to share with you that I – I -", he paused, walking an unfamiliar tightrope of words. In the back of his mind the voice of the warrior he could unleash still berated him for the weakness, the vulnerability his halting speech revealed. Silence drowned out the admonition when he turned to look at the small blond woman sitting beside him, her dark eyes patient and growing sadder by the moment as the strange vulnerability his silence revealed registered in her mind.

"You can tell me if you want, Eric. If there's anything a telepath does great, it's keep their mouth shut." As she had on the roof where Godric had met his final fate, she reached across the bed and took the cold hand of the vampire next to her. The heat of the sudden contact caused him to flinch slightly but his hand, slightly clenched into the bedspread immediately turned and opened, letting her small fingers close around his own before gently returning her grip.

If he could feel what she was feeling before, her compassion suddenly flooded through him and to his surprise a small amount of guilt he hadn't been able to detect until now. He had only a fleeting impression of it before it faded completely. He looked from their joined hands to the tense smile on her face. "I was going to say that… I'm now glad that I wasn't allowed to go with him. If I'd met the True Death, I wouldn't have been here to protect you. If Compton was taken when he was at full strength, I need not remind you the danger you are facing."

"No, you don't, but I'd appreciate it if you'd just trust me with everything you know about who you think this is. You might not get here fast enough if I'm in trouble and Alcide is a very nice… man, and he's strong and he's kind and I trust him but if this is some supernatural that he can't handle, I'd… we'd be getting' him killed, too. They've taken Bill and now I'm being hunted and you've told me you can't guarantee you'll be around if I get in trouble, so don't you think I should at least know as much as you can tell me?"

"I've told you everything I can confirm. These are a group of werewolves that have wreaked havoc throughout history. I've encountered them before, hunted them, and seen the havoc they create, empty destruction for the sake of destruction, butchery for the sake of butchery. They have little control compared to vampires and if they're fed vampire blood they become what you saw in your home, just as much an animal in human form as they are as a wolf."

"There's somethin' else you can tell me, Eric." Before he could ask what, she plunged forward, worried that he'd guess what she wanted to know. "You being involved in this isn't about your being Sheriff and it sure isn't about Bill being missin'. So why is this so important to you? So important that you'd hunt these werewolves, that Godric would, that you'd keep your eye on them for centuries, and that had you so wound up you lied to me and then showed up on my doorstep to tell me the truth as focused up as I've ever seen you – and then you barely gave me a chance to hear a word in the were's head that showed up to kill me before you killed him. If you don't have any more information, that's fine, but you can damn well tell me why everything changed when you found out it was this bunch of Nazi werewolves that took Bill."

He'd forgotten they could do this, the breathers, so many of them that he encountered were either empty fangbangers or loud, silly, squeamish tourists looking for a thrill that he'd forgotten that, one-on-one, they were often quite perceptive and able to put two and two together. … and, of course, this was Sookie Stackhouse. In the next moment he wondered if their contact and her drinking his blood had allowed her to sense his thoughts, if not word for word, then at least the motivations behind them. He wondered if he should pull his hand out from between her two warm ones but, against his will almost, his fingers had begun to tighten around hers as she waited for an answer.

The irony of his presence was not lost on him either. He'd had come here seeking her out because he was distracted, because his past – the part of it that pained him most – was now a threat to her present, because he wanted her to know how it drove him to protect her – and she had figured it out, figured him out, and now, confronted, he sat frozen. She was not the seductive, dominant minx of his daydream but her instincts had somehow given her as much power. To tell her the truth would make her even more his ally, would grant him the loyalty of a shared pain… and that might endanger her more and endanger her for his sake by her own choice - and yet, facing her, the truth seemed to be his only alternative. Lie and she would know. Lie and he would become no better than Compton. Lie and she would be denied seeing that part of him that he wanted her to see. Lie and he would lose an ally who would hate Russell Edgington as much as he did himself. A dozen more reasons to tell her the truth passed through his head, stopping only when he realized she was looking at him with confusion and compassion overshadowing the look of demand on her elfin face. She spoke, quietly and slowly, her tone full of disbelief and wonder – uttering words he hadn't heard in over a millennia.

"Eric,… you're trembling."

He looked down at the hand in her grip and suddenly felt it, the tremor passing from his captured hand into hers. His first reaction was mute astonishment – the second was something he'd also not felt in millennia – embarrassment. He pulled his hand free only to have her grab his face in both hands. "Don't do this! Don't. If I'm mixed up in somethin' that's making a thousand year old Viking vampire who can fight and fly and fuck his way out of almost anything quiver like pup – I deserve to know what it is."

Sookie released her two-handed grip on the still vaguely shocked looking vampire, disconcerted more than she wanted to admit by the contrast in how she usually perceived him – in absolute control, unbowed, detached, analytical, radiating all of those things at once. Her right hand returned where it had been, holding his chin up as if she could stop him if he looked away. From the look on his face, she knew, had he had a beating one – his heart would have been pounding. "You told me you were risking everything to tell me the truth about those fucking Nazi werewolves and you were, weren't you? … and since Godric is already gone… there's only one thing this could be about… your family… your human family, whoever's behind this - that's who killed them. Tell me I'm wrong."

Eric Northman sat frozen, saying nothing with his mouth and everything with his silence. As the shock faded, other feelings replaced it along with the wish he had better learned Godric's teaching that he be master of his emotions and not slave to them. Foremost in his mind was his feeling of foolishness for having come here, for having let a daydream drive him to seek the presence of the one woman who he knew could undermine his plans, not with intention but with the distraction of her presence. He had, as the phrase went, bigger fish to fry. He'd rebuked Sookie for her own focus on finding Compton, only to give in to his own desire to have what he could of a daydream? How fucking stupid was he allowing himself to be? He owed his slain father better than this, his mother, his baby sister, his brothers …. And the time he had taken to silently rebuke himself had only added to his dilemma – by confirming Sookie's assumption, which were confirmed further by her left hand when it touched his face and came back into his view, smeared with blood from the tears he'd no more known about than the trembling.

Sookie wiped the blood from Eric Northman's face onto a pillowcase and met his eyes, her voice soft and low despite the impact of her next words. "You're better a better schemer than this, Eric. If you'd told me all this from the beginning, everything, then I would have known why this was so important to you. I would have done a better job listening. I'm assuming you've got a plan of some sort. You always do and as long as you promise me that you'll do whatever you can to get Bill out of this safely, I'll help you. I'll listen in to whoever I can. I'll back up whatever story you want me to tell to anybody. I'm only asking you to tell me what we're up against. That doesn't seem so unreasonable, does it?"

Northman straightened and turned to face her on the bed, pulling off the pillowcase and wiping the blood tears from his face and regaining some of his equilibrium. "I told you you'd make a fine shieldmaiden, didn't I?" She smiled slightly and kept her eyes on his still blood-smeared face, waiting for his answers.

The shock faded, the truth laid bare, the vampire undone and recovered, Eric Northman was now sitting cross-legged on the bed, facing a tired but determined telepathic barmaid. "I did have a plan, but I need a new one. A good part of it relied on your being unaware of how important getting rid of the vampire using those weres is to me. I was going to make sure you were safe, but if I had to use your connection to Compton… or … you, I was going to but only if I could guarantee your safety. I would never sacrifice you to revenge people who are long dead, even my family. You have my word."

A passing look of irritation crossed over Sookie's face but faded. "Fine. I'll believe you…. But what's the "but"?

Eric smiled thinly, "But that plan would have been contingent on you not knowing I wouldn't do that or how much this meant to me or how much you mean to me that I'd risk sharing the truth. It's too late for that now, my Shieldmaid. We have to regroup, to come up with another plan, only now I don't know if we'll have the time, to deal with this vampire and his weres, and to retrieve your Mr. Compton."

"Why wouldn't you have wanted me to know what was going on?"

"So that you would believe I was doing what I would never do, endanger you, disregard you, treat you like property I was using as a bargaining chip. If the vampire using those weres is the one I believe, he's been manipulating both our kind for thousands of years. He's not easily fooled. I have enough motivation and a thousand years of experience; I could have fooled him but one wrong look between us and he would have known that something was going on. If you had found your way into his presence I would have come to you, claimed to have arranged it, and continued earning his trust… until… of course… I was able to deal with him."

Sookie shrugged slightly. "You mean kill him."

"I was trying to be polite, Miss Stackhouse."

"I think I'd rather know he was dead." Sookie smiled thinly but her thoughts were moving elsewhere, her lips tightening and thinning as she considered what she was about to do, the truth of her own she was about to reveal. He'd never be able to use what he was about to tell her, not without her allowing him to do so, so there was no harm in sharing it. … and it would go a long way to proving to Eric that, if she were still Bill's, the lengths she would go to save him.

"Your plan, I can't say I appreciate it much but… I believe you when you say you wouldn't have let me come to harm though I might never have forgiven you no matter how it turned out. At least now I know why it's so important to you, and I have your word that you'll save Bill if you can. So, I have a surprise for you, a secret. Your plan can still work and no, I don't expect you to trust me to fool some thousands of years old psychopath."

Face to face with her, just about at eye level because of his greater weight sinking into the old springs of the bed, Eric Northman's gaze locked onto Sookie's and a stir of excitement began in his gut. She was scared, he could feel that through their bond, but she was also sure of herself, for the most part because consciously and unconsciously she trusted him. Keeping his voice level, the vampire took her hand and lifted it to his lips for a chaste kiss. "And you have my word as a Sheriff and a Viking Warrior and my mother's son, that I will never use this secret against you."

"…or for me in a way that you think is best without consulting me?"

"Agreed."

Sookie squared her shoulders and met his pale, still slightly red-rimmed gaze. "If I allow it and ONLY if I allow it, I can be glamoured. I felt it happening with Bill when I was around him and he was doing it to someone else. It started happening after I knew him better, after I started feeling closer to him, but I could just stop it, watch it from the outside. So, if you want, if you think you can pull this off, help me find Bill and get this asshole back for doing in your family, I'll let you glamour me, just to forget tonight, that you were ever here, that you ever told me anything. I just want your word that that's all you'll take and all you'll put in my head is that tonight I had a nice long rest."

Eric Northman's gaze never wavered in direction but somehow intensified to the point that it smothered the woman before him, distracting her so completely that she stopped breathing. Her lungs refilled with a small gasp, which repeated slightly as the slightly stunned vampire before her reached up to cradle the left side of her face in one large hand. "You've never told Compton, have you?"

"No."

"Because you don't trust him."

"For a lot of reasons. Come on, Eric, not now… plea-."

"Of course. Forgive me but the time is coming when your trust will be fully in its proper place. And as to what you've shared, I will do what you ask and just as you have asked it… on one condition."

Sookie closed her eyes, telling herself she should have known this was coming, deeply aware of the large, cool hand on the right side of her face and neck, the thumb stroking her chin. "What condition?"

"Kiss me."

She opened her eyes as a precursor to rolling them, her lips tightening back into a scowl – only to realize that her expression of disapproval would be lost on him. Eric was leaning toward, his eyes closed, and his lips slightly parted. The hand still on her face was simply there, not pressuring her at all in any direction. Apparently, she was supposed to take the initiative now that he'd made the condition known. If it turned Bill had opted to stay with that nightmarish Lorena, had had a true change of heart – then she would have enjoyed telling him about this if she were going to remember it. If he did still love her than this was the price, a small one at that, and he would never have to know. Damn them both then.

Apparently, Sookie found the condition he had imposed acceptable. He could feel the bed move beneath him as she came to her knees and shifted her weight forward, felt her breath on his face just before her lips came in contact with his. Only then did he allow himself to move, lifting his other hand to the opposite side of her face, using all thousand years of experience to keep himself in check when he realized that Sookie Stackhouse had not broken her contact with him after a single, chaste press of her lips to his.

'What the fuck am I doing?' The voice inside of Sookie's head was her own, but her body seemed not to be. She found herself unwilling to pull back once her lips had come into contact with Northman's. In fact, she found herself pursuing the contact when he began to move backwards, his grip on her face and neck remaining in place but not holding her to him. She was doing that herself, eyes closed, leaning forward, grasping his shoulders until she realized she was no longer vertical but horizontal, still on her knees and stretched out over his body on the bed. The change in position brought her out of the fog, made her listen to the little voice inside of her head that had been demanding to know what the fuck she was doing.

Sookie yanked her head back, away from Eric's lips and out of his grasp. He let his hands fall to either side of his head and merely looked up at her, smiling slightly in what have been a disarming and innocent way had she not been wise enough to know better. Which, of course, didn't mean she wasn't disconcerted – but by her own behavior. She had reacted to just being allowed to kiss him as if she'd been one of those slutty fangbangers. Huffing as she looked down at him, she dropped her ass back on her heels and ground her teeth. "There. I met your condition, Eric. I did that so that you can get on with this plan, so we can save Bill."

With that… the look of faux innocence faded from the Sheriff of Area Five's pale countenance, replaced with the self-assured smirk she found so vexing and familiar. "Well, for the first time ever, I'm glad … Bill… meant that much to you. I would tell him how much he means to you but I wouldn't be much of a gentleman under the circumstances."

That restored her dulled temper and he smiled anew at the spark in her eyes. "You're about as worried about being a gen- can we just get this over with?"

"I didn't ruin your willingness to be glamoured?"

"Eric, I've trusted you. If you meant all that swearing on who you are and being your momma's son, let's just get this over with, but you don't forget I'm doing this to save Bill Compton."

"… or at least the one you knew."

"FINE! Or at least the one I knew. I'm sure if someone you loved seemed to be betraying you but you knew someone might be forcing them to, you'd want proof, too. I just want to get this over with and I am tired and I don't want to play your little games right now. I'll let you glamour me… but you remember what you promised – nothing happened in this room-."

"—except that you had very good night's sleep," he finished. Sighing unnecessarily, Eric lifted himself up from his prone position on the bed, knowing that the time had come to show Sookie that he could keep his word, to give her yet one more reason to trust him even if it was one she wouldn't consciously remember. "Are you ready?"

Sookie took her eyes off of him for a second, "Hold on." She hopped off the bed and then got back into it, this time under the covers. She closed her eyes and composed herself, taking her lower lip in her teeth briefly before she opened her eyes again. Not one shield remained up in her mind. She stared up at the vampire leaning over her slightly and focused on his eyes, not letting herself be distracted by their color, their depths, or the vague emotions she saw in them. This wasn't about Eric. This was about herself, this was about the focus that she was exerting back into herself to lower the barriers that would let her be glamoured and for that she had to admit something to herself… she didn't trust Bill. She didn't know if he was being forced to lie to her now. She did, as things stood, trust Eric – trusted the man who was risking his revenge for his slaughtered family on her, who had sent her help to guard her as she tracked down the man she loved when she knew he wanted her for himself. Eric had even been honest enough to admit that Bill's loss would be to his advantage. She trusted the Eric who had come to guard her even though she had refused him entry into her home – because in part, she didn't trust herself alone with him.

Eric's voice suddenly filled her head even though she now couldn't see him.

"Sookie, you're in Jackson, Mississippi. You searching for Bill."

"He's in danger, Eric. I know he is."

"You've come to save him. I sent a bodyguard to help you. A werewolf."

"Alcide's a decent person. I appreciate his help. Thank you."

"You're welcome, Sookie, but you're tired. You've been searching all day. You went back to your room to rest."

"I am tired. I'm so tired. Why are you here, Eric?"

"I'm not here, Sookie. You're dreaming. You're imagining me. You were grateful I sent Alcide with you, you wanted to let me know how things were going, if any of the clues you'd found meant anything to me, but you were too tired to call. You're just dreaming."

"Oh." Her dazed expression reflected a disappointment that brought a smile to the vampire's lips. He wanted to stroke her hair, to brush her parted lips with his thumb but he didn't want to break the spell she had allowed him to put her under. She was fully in his influence, he realized, had done what she promised, had trusted him with a secret that she had not shared with Compton. He would honor the vow he had made to her, that she would remember nothing of this night. After all, she had done it in part to allow him to continue his revenge for his slaughtered kin. Nothing in the promises he'd made, however, forbade him from allowing her to remember this later, at least he owed himself that out of this night.

"Sookie, this dream will end soon. I'll be gone from inside your head…. But you've had a long night. A great deal has happened. A few things you don't remember clearly. Sometime in the future, when the time is right, you'll remember all of what happened tonight and I'll help you… and I'll be real. Do you understand?"

"Mmm-hmmm. Just now I wanna' go back to sleep."

"Then do so. Remember to call me when you awaken. Let me know how the search is going."

"Call Eric."

"That's right. Goodnight, Sookie. You're going to rest well and feel wonderful when you awaken."

… And with that she was gone, her head fallen to the side, her body limp. Eric watched her for a moment and then hovered up so that his steps wouldn't disturb her, retrieving the bloodstained pillowcase that would have lead to questions. Slipping over her body through the air, he closed the window behind him as he left, the smile on his face still in place as he walked into the door of Fangtasia. Pam looked up, her eyebrows arching.

"You didn't, did you? I thought she was still hung up on Compton, off hunting for him?"

"No, I didn't and she is… but I have what I wanted, irrefutable proof that she trusts me and questions him."

"And what are you going to do with it?"

Northman spun a chair around and straddled it, facing her with the vague smile that had inspired her question still on his lips. "That's the easy part, my dear Pamela: absolutely nothing. In time, that will take care of itself."


	2. Chapter 2A

Chapter 2

"**Focus on a spot about two inches above your hand. Imagine it first. That's where everything starts."**

**Sookie Stackhouse looked down at her right hand, cupped before her about a foot from her body and pictured, not the flash of energy that erupted from her in the past in times of great anger or fear, but a tiny pool of it, hovering and pulsing. Claudine, her fairy mentor, stood facing her, a small ball of light already casting its tiny rays onto her palm and fingers as she held her hand next to the blond fairy's facing her.**

**Sookie did what she had been taught, calmed herself, reached into the core of light that she could now see following the curve of her spine, down the nerves of her legs and emanating up from the ground. The Fae world was charged with it, like standing on an electrical line. She had been told that there were similar lines of resonance back in the "real world", the world where she had started her unusual, often unhappy life. At least now she knew why she'd been unhappy, that she was not entirely of that world, that her mind could reach beyond. However, the farther from one of those "lines of resonance" she was, the harder she had to work to reach into it, the weaker the power she would be able to channel. Once she was trained, she'd be able to overcome that, so she'd been told; she could then reach for the deeper core of power that was available everywhere to those who knew it was there.**

**The ball of light in her hand winked into being, a tiny cosmic smile that she had brought into existence – made of the same force of nature that she was able to use as a battering ram in great moments of anger or fear. In this form it was harmless and beautiful, a tiny sun that she now imagined floating up and in front of her eyes. It followed her will, dancing gently before her, somehow not hurting her eyes as it blocked out her vision of the tree-lined fields, brilliant with actual sunlight, just over Claudine's pink-clad shoulder. She told the ball of light to circle her head and it did then told it to return to her hand. Again, the energy cluster obeyed, hovering there to await her next command. She bade it to grow larger and warmer.**

**Claudine reabsorbed her own orb of light and came to Sookie's side, speaking softly, "Now, change the color. Make it golden."**

**The other fairy nodded and focused - and the ball before her became a peaceful shade of gold that matched her tiered dress. She turned to smile at the dark haired female. "That's a new one. We've never done color before."**

**Claudine nodded. "It's important. Color is associated with many magics. Gold is regarded in most as the color of healing, red with passion or anger, blue with control and focus."**

"**When I've used this power before, the light was white. What does that mean?" Sookie looked back at the quietly flickering orb. Her lesson to transfer it to her peripheral awareness to sustain it had gone well. She could now divide her attention to some degree and sustain the projection of her will.**

**Claudine went into gentle lecture mode once again. "White is the presence of all those elements. When you used your power against the Maenad, what were the circumstances?"**

"**I was angry. Her blood had poisoned Bill. Everything was a horrible mess. I'd just come back from Dallas – and all I wanted was my normal life back for at least a little while and all I could see was this crazy woman who no one around had been able to do anything about while we were gone. She'd screwed up everyone I knew … and my Gran's home."**

"**Extinguish your light for a moment. Let's break that down." Sookie obeyed, not making the tiny ball of light vanish but remembering to draw it back into her hand, into her core. This time it felt different. The golden light was much warmer. She smiled as it coursed through her and Claudine smiled at her reaction. She gestured at the grass and they sat down, Sookie looking up at the slightly taller woman expectantly, eager for one more piece of the puzzle of herself to be unraveled. Claudine let a golden spiral of light emerge from her fingertips and spin before them. "You said the Maenad's blood had poisoned Bill Compton."**

"**Her blood was black and disgusting. He was gagging and sick. It was all I could do to support him and pull him away. I got between him and that… thing and that's when she got hold of me."**

"… **and there's the first element. You wanted to heal Compton, protect him."**

"**Yes."**

"**And you were shocked and angry about all the people and places that had been harmed and damaged."**

"**Okay, I get it…. And Mary Ann was something I could focus on – so the light was white. And when I used it on Russell Edgington's weres, Bill and I were both under attack, I was angry, and I had somewhere to focus, and when I used it the last time, it was Eric who was hurt, I was pissed again and there was the vampire who'd caused all of the problems I'd had since Bill'd been taken just waitin' to be on the receiving end. Does that mean that if I'm just pissed and no one's hurt, the light would be red?"**

"**It would but you must learn to never use your power just in anger. It will take a little time but we'll teach you so that you're ready to deal with what you must. Don't worry."**

**Sookie nodded but scowled a moment later. "I'm guessin' by the way you put that… that I'm just not gonna' be able to stay here."**

**Claudine offered her new charge a knowing smile. "You came here at the worst point in your life, when you felt betrayed, when you felt abandoned, confused, and alone, and miserable with the truths that had been revealed to you about a man, a being, you genuinely loved – one you now suspect has been made mad by his lust for you. You do need to be here, Sookie, and you are welcome here but you know yourself you cannot remain here forever."**

**Sookie nodded, remembering the night she had stood on the porch of her still damaged home, cursing at the top of her lungs at the vampire she'd been ready to marry such a short time ago, having learned from the one who also wanted her, that she'd been manipulated into loving her would-be fiancée at the risk of her own life. She'd had it with anything with supernatural, vampires, werewolves, and whatever else. … and in the midst of her pain, she'd ironically been invited here, to the realm of the Fae, and accepted. At least here she could learn what she was and what she could do… and now, it seemed, what would be needed of her. She might have known she was not going to escape for long. Powers such as the ones she possessed did not exist merely for parlor tricks; they came with the obligation to know how to use them, and the charge to do so – which might well have been why she'd been involving herself with supernaturals from the moment they'd become part of her world. Pressed, she had battled creatures that even the other supernaturals were powerless against but that hardly meant she felt she wanted to do so again or that she was ready.**

**Sookie's musings of the past went full cycle back to the night she came here. "I hate to think what's gone on with Bill. I should hate him but he is like he was crazy, talking about killin' everybody and hovering around in my life like he was some crazy guardian angel. I feel sorry for him in one way. If he didn't really know what I was, maybe drinkin' so much of my blood did make him crazy or if he knew maybe he didn't know it would do that. Could it?"**

**Claudine sat back, considering. "I don't know. I don't think so. Generally our blood has healing properties but there is always the chance of "too much of a good thing" being at play. It's been so long since we've associated with vampires that perhaps the knowledge has been lost."**

**Sookie nodded sadly, then lifted her eyes. "I have to go back. I know that. I can't just hide here. There's Jason to consider, and Tara, and Sam, and all the people that I love, and my cousin's boy. He's special, too, we need to look out for him if I can find him again."**

"**You have a place with us always, Sookie, but you're right, you also have an important role to play in all that's about happen between this world and the one you call home. I'm just so sorry your introduction had to be what it was, that you were so lost and alone before you came here. You mentioned your family, your friends, your employer – there is one more person who deserves your consideration because even when truth causes pain it is preferable, especially when one is touched by so many dangers. The ones we blindly keep closest are the most deadly."**

**A look of question passed over the small, beautiful face of the human-fairy hybrid who sat before her Fae mentor, followed by an expression that combined regret, sadness, and confusion. "Eric."**

**Claudine nodded carefully. "He is not what we had come to expect of vampires and is certainly the exception in haviug offered up his life to protect one of our own from another vampire. He is not what the vampires had been to our kind and that because of you."**

"**What's that supposed to mean?"**

"**You'll learn all that in time, Sookie, for now, I and the others have much to consider. I once gave a warning that there was someone in your life who would want to extinguish your light – not just the one in your hands but the one that might bridge two worlds – yet another of his kind has offered himself that your light would continue. You cannot disregard that, nor can we, so the time has come to share something with you that we, the elders and I, have seen in prophecies. As it involves Eric Northman, it seems only you are the rightful messenger. For now it is a small prophecy in the scheme of things but those often have the most portent."**

**Sookie stared at the Fae with an expression of confusion that slowly gave way to guilt and relief. "Eric was willing to die for me and all I did was scream the worst things I could think of at his face and then run away. I don't even know how long I've been here, if he'd want to even see me, much less believe some prophecy. He's not one to believe anything else is control of what goes on in his life but him."**

**Claudine reached over and took Sookie Stackhouse's lightly clenched right first, "No prophecy is clear and how he handles the events to come is still in his control, will still rely on who he is and not the circumstances. As for the length of time you've been gone, to some degree, time is irrelevant here for the most part. Your absence can be handled with minor difficulties and I have little doubt that Mr. Northman will welcome your presence again. Regardless, the time has come for you to reconnect with your own world, also. You need both of them to be complete."**

**Sookie felt the hammer strike on the nail of her soul. She had been feeling out of sorts here. The Fae Realm was beautiful, gentle, filled with surprises that involved new colors of butterfly and song bird, not werewolf bitches breaking down her doors or towers of rotting meat in her driveway, and she had learned so much here, if not everything yet, about who she was and what she could do. But there were things she'd left unfinished, people she'd left behind, and she had come to the slow realization that, fangs or not, one of those people was Eric Northman. How the hell had that happened?**

**Sookie looked up from her the rich grass in front of her shins folded beneath the soft yellow material of her loose-fitting dress. "What am I supposed to tell him?"**

**A frown marred Claudine's expression. "As I said, the prophecy that came to me and that I shared with the elders, was brief and vague but powerful enough that I have no doubt that it is relevant and inevitable in whatever form it takes."**

**Sookie shrugged impatiently. In all the time she'd been here, she'd yet to adjust to how the Fae would talk in riddles. She knew it was, to some extent, to teach her to think through how things worked here but it was also because they operated in an inexact state of existence. Maybe because they had so much power that was best; they couldn't take the attitude that they knew what was best because they didn't. Well, maybe if she shared that with Eric he'd be more willing to listen to her or … knowing Eric, more likely he'd just use it to further dismiss her warnings. Knowing which would happen, she felt a rueful smile twist her lips. "Okay, let's hear it and then show me how I get to him."**

**Claudine nodded, her expression hardening. "When prophecies come to us, it's rare and more often than not, it seems they are to prepare us for a terrible challenge ahead but this is the first time I've had one about a specific person, and a vampire at that, but it was no less intense." Her mouth thinned and flexed and she closed her eyes once before looking at Sookie again, "I warned it was brief but the prophecy came in the form of an image and then the very powerful feeling of what I was to tell you. And it happened while I was wide awake in the presence of others." Claudine shook her head at Sookie's frozen expression. "I saw you standing in a forest, Northman was on his knees in your arms, clinging to you. Your hands were covered with golden light. You were cradling his head tightly against you but his weapons lay polished and ready around you both." Claudine sighed and shook herself. "The message came without words, just feelings, but I have doubt what I was meant to tell you. I left my friends and went to the elders – and we decided that you had to know and make your decision if you would return to him. Prophecies can be made meaningless by our own will, Sookie. If you go to him, it is by your choice. Do you understand?"**

**Sookie broke eye contact with effort and remembered to breathe. Her thoughts were as jumbled as her feelings. "It still seems like I don't have much of one. So, what was the message?"**

"**To tell him that you will be there when he needs you most and in turn Northman will protect your life in a way you will come to cherish."**

**Sookie raised her eyes and stared out at the sunlit stretch of forest. There was a brook running past them, close enough to hear, soft grass, a brilliant sky, and a few of her "kind" conversing quietly and smiling. It reminded her of the stories she'd been told about heaven… but she wasn't dead and she wasn't blissful… and, in fact, she was suddenly annoyed at life in general. This place suddenly seemed almost as crazy as home; she hardly ever got a straight answer there– at least not since Gran had died, but the Fae Realm was no free set of encyclopedias either, add to that, at least if she was back in Bon Temps, even if it wasn't perfect, it didn't look like it was trying to be. **

**Claudine felt the change in her apprentice before she saw it in her dark and slowly narrowing eyes. "You'll have to come back. You have a great deal yet to learn."**

"**Fine… but for now… I think it is time. I want to go back and it looks like I'm supposed to start with Eric."**

**Claudine offered her a sad little smile. "So much has happened to you in so little time. I'm glad you finally found us but you have been through enough trials and challenges to make your own decisions. Trust me – and trust yourself. Are you ready to go now?"**

**Sookie nodded. "And thank you for that. Sometimes even when you're a stubborn old goat you can still be right. So… how do I get back?"**

**Claudine raised her hands, palms up before her. "Last lesson for now. You're going to take yourself back but I'll help you."**

**Sookie followed her gesture, raising her hands up and holding her palms to face the calm blue sky, listening as Claudine began the last lecture she would hear in a while. "If you want to return to a place, you imagine it right in your hands, the place or a part of it – a doorknob, a porch, even the inside if it's a building. Surround it with blue light in your mind. Create a focal point around it and imagine yourself there. If it's a person you want to reach, do the same and wherever they are, that's where you'll take yourself. You don't have to know where they are."**

"**That's convenient. I guess that's the way to go since I got no idea where Eric is." She wiggled her hips to ground herself more solidly and let a picture of Eric form in her mind, avoiding the last time she had seen him, covered in drying concrete from Bill's deranged and totally dimwitted attempt to imprison him. She scowled as she moved that out of her mind and decided that the best place to picture Eric was when she had been with him while she was the most comfortable. She brought up an image of Eric the night he had fought the were in her home. Eric had endangered himself for her that night, even dealing with the fact that she had accidentally shot him. After he'd killed the were and before he'd healed enough to cart him off and bury him, she had helped Eric onto the dining room table (the only place big enough for him to stretch out without having to climb the stairs) and sat with him while he'd slowly healed from the gunshot and the were bite, fighting her temptation to feed him with her blood and heal him faster. Hell, if she'd known then that Bill was a lying jackass, she would have fed Eric just to spite him. As it was, she'd only helped Eric off with his blood-soaked jacket and shirt and cleaned the blood, his own and the weres from his body, and tried to ignore that even in his weakened state, which she knew he'd been playing up just a bit, he was enjoying her attentions. There had been some benefits, from his perspective, of her refusal to feed him. **

**The memory of his pale, half-naked, sculpted body beneath her tending hands suddenly skipped a track – the memory of a blood-soaked night becoming the memory of a dream – of a dream inspired by her ingestion of his blood, a dream where they had lain naked in each other's embrace, of Eric Northman's long, powerful, completely healthy body moving against her on a bed of white satin, of his promise that for them – this was only the beginning. The memory enveloped her, becoming so encompassing that she was barely aware of Claudine's hands sliding beneath her own, folding her fingers to her palms and her focus on the dream image. In the back of her mind a glimmer of irritation and vague amusement flared up and died. Claudine, her fairy guide-mother, also seemed to want to play matchmaker as well.**

**The first change she was aware of came from her once-grounded-in-grass backside. It was now grounded on something soft and slick. The darkness around her was the next thing that registered as her eyes adjusted, behind their lids, to the absence of the endless sunlight of the Fae Realm. It was also now about twenty degrees cooler. Steeling herself, trusting that Claudine hadn't sent her to Eric while he was somewhere survivable only by a vampire, she opened her eyes. **

**Even though she'd known it was going to be dark – she hadn't prepared for it to be DARK. There was only one source of "light" in the room. What little illumination existed around her was reflected off the pale, naked, pink-tainted body before her. Sookie's eyes rolled up to a ceiling she was just beginning to be able to see. She groped around the bed for moment and found a loose bit of fabric that she assumed was a sheet. She pulled it over the resting vampire with a huff and looked around. She was sitting on the left side of a king-size, four-poster bed in an immense room. Glimmers of light from the security lock on the door pricked her eyes from at least fifteen feet away and the pinkish light cast over Eric's body, now covered to his broad chest in a dark satin sheet, came from the clock display on the nightstand. It read 7:20 p.m. That meant Eric would be up sometime soon but she had no way of knowing exactly when because she had no clue when she had returned in terms of the time of year. She reached for the clock and fumbled with the buttons, trying to "see" in the darkness if it also had the date programmed into it somewhere. She didn't worry about accidentally tripping the alarm while doing so since - by all measures knowable to humans (at least for now) - Eric was dead anyway. Failing to find the date, she put the clock radio back down and looked back at Eric's peacefully resting form. His hair was slightly mussed. He lay on his back, his left arm across his middle beneath the sheet, his right arm still free and stretched out above her. **

**Sookie let out a slow breath. Breathing in more deeply than she had before, the scent of patchouli drifted into her nose. Another sense reporting in as she adjusted to her surroundings – one that told a bit about Eric's shower a few hours ago. Sight, touch, and scent were accounted for but she could hear nothing. Doubtless, the bedroom was an interior room and she knew she must be in Eric's house. She wondered briefly what the rest of it looked like – probably the home version of the red Corvette, she thought with a smile, but even if she'd been rude enough to poke around without his knowing, the security lock on the door almost certainly required a code she didn't have nor had access to in a vampire's mind.**

**7:30 came and went. Her eyes, now as adapted as they could be, took in the rest of what she could see from her central perch. The room was huge. A computer glowed dimly at the far end, only the tiny lights on the keyboard now detectable between the slats of the chair before it. Sookie slid off the bed and went over to it. She didn't know much about computers but she knew enough to get on the Internet and find out when sunset was today. She made her way over to it carefully, her feet, once tucked under her and warm, cringed at the cold feeling of the wooden floor. A shiver ran through her entire body as she started pecking at the keys. The screen activated but proved useless as it demanded a password before it would do anything. Well, she should have known that, even if she was in his private room. That brought another scowl to her face. Any place else she wouldn't have wondered how he was going to react to seeing her, here she did wonder but she'd just have to tell him that she hadn't been in control of her "landings" just yet.**

**Her feet chilled to being numb, she looked around for another place to sit besides the bed but the desk chair was barely padded, large to accommodate its usual occupant, and made of what was probably going to be the same hardwood as the bed when she could see it. Slapping herself lightly on the forehead, she crossed over to the doorway on her frozen feet to hunt for a light switch, reminding herself to be careful to avoid the security panel when she got there. Her feet encountered something soft as she went past the foot of the bed, something soft and thick. It brushed not only her foot but her leg. She reached down and groped the material – recognizing it for a thick terry robe. She slid it on immediately, making plans to toss it off the moment he stirred. The thick robe, the scent of his shower clinging to it as well, rustled against the material of her dress and, Viking-sized as it was – maybe even custom-made, it threatened to trip her if she didn't move carefully. She found the light switch and flipped it, closing her eyes and letting them adjust to the dim glow of the small chandeliers she had seen twinkling in the near blackness above either side of the bed. Four poster king bed, mood-lit chandeliers, silk sheets – the room itself screamed "SEX" even if one didn't know its usual occupant.**

**Sookie opened her eyes again and felt her fall open an instant later when she turned around. Eric Northman was facing her, propped up on his left arm and smiling in a way the put her stopped heart in her clogged throat. The black silk sheet had fallen low his waist and his right arm lay across his body down to his thigh. "As fantastic as it is to see you again, Miss Stackhouse, I have to ask – is there something even more fantastic that for some incredible reason I… just can't remember?"**


	3. Chapter 3

'Well, this was new – me without something to say.' The thought bounced around Sookie Stackhouse's head for at least ten seconds before the nervous smile formed on her lips. Eric hadn't moved, including the smile on his own face that, however small it was, was certainly the opposite of nervous. He was, at least, letting her sort herself out, and she decided honesty was the best way to repay him. She didn't know how she got here exactly. She didn't know what to say. …And she didn't know how she felt. Given all that, she gave into her own ignorance and lifted her small shoulders under the large robe and let them drop. "It was freezin' in here. I … I didn't think you'd mind."

"Seeing you in my clothing? Of course not." The smile unchanged, he stood up, letting the dark sheet puddle to the floor, and moved like an immense ghost toward her. Sookie rolled her eyes, glancing away from him as he approached and then walked past her to the thermostat on the wall. Moments later tendrils of warmth were snaking around her head and then slowly down her body. Eric walked back past her, returning to the bed, and this time, even as she told them not to, her eyes dropped from the ceiling and followed his retreat. She was suddenly confused as to which heating system was more efficient, her own or the one now sighing through the walls. Eric returned back to the bed and stretched himself out on his side, facing her with an expression of patience that had been schooled with a millennium of experience.

Sookie bit the inside of her cheek, her arms still tightly folded. She wasn't expecting this, that Eric would be so calm and seemingly detached by her arrival back into this reality – to say nothing of the fact that her arrival was taking place in his bedroom. She suddenly worried that she'd gone too far, said one too many terrible things to him when all he'd done was offer his own life to protect her from a psycho. What the hell had she done going off on him? Edgington would have been after her regardless. Eric had had to string him along to make him vulnerable and damned if she could have fooled Edgington even if she'd known Eric was forced to use her to do so. Well, now at least she knew where to start. She owed him an apology but she still wished the hell he would cover himself up. Even if he didn't care, he damn well knew she did. Well, fine, she thought, it wasn't like it was the first time she'd seen all of him and this time, at least, he wasn't quite as ready to have a flag flown off him. Huffing in a now much warmer breath, she walked over to the bed and sat down at his waist-level, facing him so that she was only looking at him from there up.

Eric bit back the smile threatening to broaden on his lips. She was sitting right where he'd planned, looking him in the eyes, seated so that the rest of his naked form was out of her sight. It wasn't his desire for her that had made him torment her with a blatant display of his naked body but the fact that he wanted to unnerve her a little. She'd been gone for weeks. He wanted to know what had been happening to her and the best way to do that was to make her uncomfortable, to force her into the mode where she often got herself in the most trouble, speaking her mind without thinking first. If she ever were to become his, given his position as Sheriff, she would have to learn to guard against that trait. Missing, so far, that he'd won the upper hand, she looked down at him with a contrite expression, the corners of her mouth tucking in before she spoke.

"I owe you an apology. You offered to die, really die, to make sure Russell couldn't get to me and even if I didn't let you, you didn't know I wouldn't so I shouldn't have carried on like I did. I guess finally learning how Bill had betrayed me made me so mad and embarrassed I couldn't think straight. I was so pissed at you for being right I acted like a fool. Gran's probably wishin' she could still give me a piece of her mind right about now."

Eric smiled briefly and then nodded up at her. "Apology accepted. I only wish I'd been able to share what was truly happening. As it was, you were terrified, nearly drained, and then perhaps the worst – you learned the truth about Compton. Your responses were understandable but I hope in the future you will understand I have your best interests at heart even if I can't be obvious." Before she could respond, he reached out and ran his hand down the back of her arm. "Where have you been, Miss Stackhouse? I assume with your own kind."

Glad for the change in subject, Sookie nodded, wishing that the skin at the small of her back would stop tingling. She pulled herself away from the sensation. "I was. Don't ask me how I got there. I ran out of my house the last night I saw you and Bill; Claudine showed up out of nowhere and offered to take me away. I felt so confused and empty, anywhere but here sounded like gravy on a steak . Wherever it was, I felt welcome and accepted and they were teaching me about that crazy light that comes out of my hands. But - most of the other … of my… kind - there didn't seem to have anything to do but goof around and dance or they'd be sitting in circles talkin' about stuff I apparently wasn't supposed to know goin' by how fast they'd shut up when I came around."

"You're an unknown quantity to the Fae, Sookie. You've been living as a human and … keeping company with vampires… all with Fae blood in your veins. Given our history with the Fae, it's little wonder they'd be cautious around you. They may not have taught you everything they could have, or all that you're capable of doing - always keep that in mind."

Sookie took a breath, about to defend Claudine and the others she'd met, how they'd tried to warn her about Bill and, what seemed like moments ago, shared with her the prophecy about herself and Eric. The protests died before the breath about to carry them finished. She had a pretty terrible track record when it came to dismissing Eric's warnings about who she ought to trust and there was every chance he was right. Suddenly she wondered about her promise to go back; she might be better off telling Claudine to come to her reality if she truly intended to teach her anything – but if Claudine was playing her for a fool, why help her come back to the one person who could now cause her to doubt them? – or maybe Claudine was trying to help her but she was being used also. She sighed as a familiar feeling overcame her, one that brought a rueful twist to lips. She had been with Eric Northman for less than five minutes, while he was alive – that was, and already she was, once again, confused, frustrated, bizarrely comfortable, bizarrely grateful – and more than aware that she was sitting on his bed and that he was completely naked a foot or so away from her. She was suddenly immensely glad that Eric couldn't read her mind either - and then remembered that one didn't always have to be a telepath to know what someone else was thinking, especially if they had …say … a thousand years of practice at reading people other ways, and lots of those times when their undead life depended on it. Depending on the reader then… maybe that wasn't always such a bad thing.

This time, when Eric reached for her arm again, she leaned into his grip, closing her eyes when he spoke.

"I'm sorry to make you question your allegiances again but if you are to keep yourself safe in a world that includes supernaturals, you must learn to always question the intentions of those around you, especially when you're on the receiving end of what seems to be something too good to be true. That's even more true when it happens at a time when you're vulnerable."

Sookie, despite the fact that she was now sufficiently warm, folded her arms all the more tightly, feeling the dark, thick terry robe bunch around her breasts, the soothing scent released anew by her movements. In the back of her mind she knew that the sight of her as of this moment must have be instilling a feeling of victory, satisfaction, and of course – always, desire in Eric. She was sitting on his "FUCK ME" bed while he lay naked upon it, pouring out the baffled contents of her heart, offering apologies, wearing his bathrobe, and now was clutching it against herself like a security blanket. … and damn him, he wasn't doing anything about it but letting her decide what was next. Well, hell, that was new. She thought she'd been getting, finally, something that she wanted and needed when Claudine had shown up at Gran's grave to spirit her off to Fairyland and now Eric had thrown a giant bucket of ice water on that even. … and given her the logical reasons she should doubt that the Fae had her best interests at heart either. She'd just been so relieved to be around others like herself that it hadn't crossed her mind to question their motives, too, and it should have after all her experiences with supernatural creatures until now. Eric obviously had other vampires he couldn't trust. Someone just being Fae didn't mean she ought to totally trust them. Well, Claudine had sent her back to Eric – she was pretty sure she could trust Claudine, and if there was something she wasn't supposed to know yet, Claudine had at least told her that.

If nothing else, she could trust Jason and Tara but both of them were so wrapped up in their own messes that she wouldn't have bothered them with hers if she'd known where to find them that night.

Jason.

Damn it.

She was going to have to keep her mouth shut that she'd come back to Eric first, of course, God alone knew what she'd've found if she'd popped into Jason's bedroom. In the middle of the night that might have been true for Eric, as well but not when she'd shown up. She doubted Eric had even just one person he'd trust enough to allow in his bedroom while he was resting and totally vulnerable – Jason, on the other hand, even if he had that Crystal girl now, he almost needed to have one of those ticket machines at the damn bakery to keep his "customers" in order. She suddenly giggled at the image of the line into Jason's bedroom snaking around the house and down the driveway. Hell, it was almost that bad. The giggle, of course, raised the brow of Eric Northman. He shifted on the bed, moving up to rest against the pillows near the carved headboard, and having fallen into gentleman mode, drew the dark sheet with him and covered himself as he settled back. Of course, he moved slowly enough as he did so as not to deprive her of a lingering glance of his family jewels. She blushed and, unsurprisingly, thought of Jason again. This time the giggle escaped her unintended and she sat up and relaxed, amused again when she saw Eric Northman staring at her with an expression of feigned insecurity.

"While I appreciate the sound of your laughter, Miss Stackhouse, I have to wonder if I should feel hurt by the timing."

Sookie's eyes rolled back in her head and the smile reappeared on her face. "Oh, please. If you had anything a woman'd laugh at you wouldn't risk it playin' peek-a-boo. And for your information, I was thinking about Jason – because… that… part of his anatomy is all he seems to worry about half the time, too."

Eric's expression sobered suddenly. "There is something you should know, Miss Stackhouse."

Sookie rankled but kept it to herself. She was beginning to hate it a little when he called her "Miss Stackhouse". It always sounded like he was trying to seduce her when he said it. "What's that?"

"Your brother has taken on a leadership role in a colony of …shall we say… genetically challenged, half-wit shifters not far from Bon Temps. Sophie Anne forced me into some… business dealings with them. He's apparently trying to reform them. It did provide me some amusement while you've been away."

Sookie straightened to her full sitting height, her face a stunned mask. "Leadership role? Jason? My brother Jason? He might be fine tellin' a crew where to dig a ditch but the idea of him tryin' to reform anybody makes about as much sense as a chicken chasing a fox."

"Apparently… there was a woman involved."

Sookie fell forward again, her elbows on her knees, and snorted. "Well, she must've been downright amazing." The blush that instantly followed the words undid any hope of what she'd meant by "amazing", as did the smile that flickered across Eric Northman's pale face. Sookie rolled her eyes and tried to forgive herself and blame her brother for being such a tomcat that he'd left no other assumption available. Sighing, she folded her arms again, the thick terry bunching against her. "Well, then I guess I don't have to worry about when I see him. He's had plenty to keep him busy."

Eric said nothing once again. Sensing where she was leading herself now that she had resolved, in part, what tell her brother, he knew she was working her way to telling him why she had arrived here, during his daytime rest, via some means only the Fae commanded, a means that had allowed her to "arrive" through his elaborate and layered security system. The strategist in him filed it away as a worrisome ability. If hostilities were to ever break out between the Fae Realm and the Vampires again, it would certainly be a powerful advantage to be able to come and go as one pleased, even through heat sensors, cameras, lasers triggers, and whatever else. If Sookie had arrived intending to harm him, his last helpless sight would have been her face.

Of course, waking to her shrouded in his bathrobe, her eyes wide and mouth hanging open had been just the opposite of waking up with a stake coming out of his chest and as eager as he was to know why she had come to him, he was just as determined to let her chart her own course home. She'd had very little chance to do that of late and he had had some hand in that loss of control. He wanted her to know that she was now in control of how things progressed. He still wanted her, badly, but also knew that forcing her hand in any way was the worst thing he might do to further that goal. When Sookie came to him, it would be because it was her choice. His minor deception in Dallas, having her drink his blood, had been, of course, motivated by his acquisitive desires but also, very certainly by his knowledge that Compton was a thoroughly inadequate guardian for this unique and spirited creature. Now that he knew what she was… and that Compton had had reason to suspect from the start, he was even more scornful of his delusion that he could have protected her from anything. The idiot hadn't even been able to deal with a baby vamp.

Sookie Stackhouse was unaccustomed to the sound of her own silence. Worse, she was unaccustomed to being granted it by someone she'd started out loathing and now found herself drawn to under the weirdest of circumstances. Some of the most… honest… conversations she'd had with Eric Northman had been at the top of her lungs … and now she was supposed to tell him that he was part of some prophecy, just after he'd told her to suspect even the people who had welcomed her at her worst. Well, regardless, she had decided that she could trust Claudine. Claudine had tried to warn her about Bill and her prophecy about Eric hadn't been bad about him but that he'd need her and then protect her at some point in the future. There was nothing new about the last part, at least. Sookie lifted her eyes from the sheets in front of her and finally met the pale, expectant gaze that had been focused on the top of her head.

"I guess – I know you want to know why I'm here, why I didn't go to my brother, or Sam, or back to Gran's even just to be at alone. It wasn't just that I owed you an apology – it's something that Claudine had to tell me and it was about you."

Eric's gaze remained steady. The only reaction he showed was a slight lifting of his brow. He wasn't about to give into his impatience now when he was this close to finding out why Sookie Stackhouse had appeared in his bedroom – and this time not just in his head. A corner of his mouth lifted involuntarily; at least she would be thinking that her last words and not his last thoughts had caused the twitch. "I do only have until sunrise, Miss Stackhouse."

She glared at him emptily and bit back her own smirk, giving up her internal battle. Regardless if she told him now, ten minutes from now, ten hours from now – or whenever – his reaction was going to be the same and she'd feel just as squirrelly sharing it. "All right, fine. I don't know what to make of this or if I believe it but Claudine came to me just before I came back here. We talked about a lot of things but she'd had this "vision". She called it a prophecy but then she kept sayin' how we still controlled our fate and how we reacted so I don't know what she was really trying to tell me but… anyway, it was about you… and me. She said it was just images and feelings but what struck her was how strong she'd felt it and that she'd never had visions about a vampire before."

Eric remained impassive, trying to be open-minded for her sake. The idea of a fairy having prescient daydreams about him amused the hell out of him on one level and made him uneasy on another. The history of the Vampire and the Fae was bloody and messy and the perfect motivation for revenge if ever there was one, and now that they'd revealed the coirntinued existence, it could impact everything in ways that a millennia of experience made him dread.

As a vampire and a Viking, he could appreciate a good battle but three-way carnage was another matter. The Fae could easily find allies with the Humans, especially with those associated with the Fellowship of the Sun and their like. Passing themselves off as "angels" would be an easy thing to do to the gullible that flocked to such hate-filled beliefs, but no beings held the kinds of powers the Fae did without some darkness present. Any alliance with the humans was bound to have a wretched effect on them in the long run, to say nothing of what his kind would have to resort to to survive their unified front. He sighed wearily and suddenly felt every bit of his thousand plus years – feeling his own prophecy come out of his unhappy musings – a harbinger of dread for Sookie Stackhouse who seemed to have become the focal point of three species of beings, all of whom had a capacity for destruction. As literacy and trade had become commonplace in the world, he had become appreciative of an ancient Chinese general and philosopher, Sun Tzu, who taught that the more waste came from conflict, the less honorable and successful the conflict was. With what could become of a conflict involving Vampire, Fae, and Human interests, Sun Tzu would be disappointed to the point of madness.

Sookie's large, dark eyes, once pinned to the air between herself and the gorgeous, scantly-covered vampire slowly focused on his face. The smile once there was faded, replaced by a slack expression of sadness and regret. "Eric, what's wrong? I haven't even told you what she saw, and knowing you, it's not news you'll take all that badly, I promise."

Northman lifted his eyes to meet the compassion and confusion and trace of weak humor awaiting him in Sookie's gaze. "I was having my own feelings of dread, Miss Stackhouse, that too much is coming together and being placed on your shoulders, a convergence of three worlds of creatures with little reason to get along. …. And feeling my burden of having been drawn into it as well – but that's a discussion for another time. Go on, finish your tale or rather, Claudine's."

Sookie's eyes suddenly brimmed with tears but she held them back. Eric had summed up her fears and her confusion, put words to them in the space of seconds when she hadn't seen him in… in… however the hell long she'd been with the Fae. Why did the person she'd started out hating know her better than she knew herself? Suddenly the tale Claudine had told her didn't seem so crazy or embarrassing or ridiculous. Squaring her shoulders, she plunged into it. "Okay… Here goes… Claudine said she saw the two of us in a forest. You were on your knees, clinging to me and I holding your head against me, and there was a golden light around my hands. Before she told me about all this, she told me that a … person… like me - using golden light, was using it to heal so I'm guessing something had happened to you but then she also said your weapons were all around us and ready to be used. She said, I was supposed to give you a message, that…," her bravado suddenly faded and she felt the blood seeping slowly up her neck, "that… I would be there for you when you needed me the most and that you would protect me in a way that I would… come to cherish."

Northman looked away from the telepath slowly, his ice-colored gaze locking on the recently added tapestry hanging on the wall across from the foot of the bed without seeing the fleet of longboats on it. He felt Sookie's eyes on him and then felt her turn away, embarrassment starting to flavor her neckline. No need for that, my dear, he thought to himself and gently tightened his hold on her arm. "I don't want your appreciation of my protection, Sookie, I want your expectation of it. As for being there when I needed you most – you already have done me the kindness of remaining with Godric at his True Death, and of saving me from the sun when I attempted to destroy Edgington, I would only hope that if I am to have the experience of… being in your care that I might be at least well enough to enjoy it."

Sookie rolled her eyes but only slightly. "I'm sure if any of the comes true, you'll find a way to enjoy it. Anyway, she thought it was important enough to send me back here and tell you."

Eric shifted his weight slightly and drew his leg up, draping his arm over it, "And now that you have, Miss Stackhouse, what are your plans?"

Sookie's mouth drifted open just slightly, a look of confusion slowly making its way across her face. She looked lost and somewhat forlorn suddenly and Northman fought back his urge to lean up and pull her the rest of the way onto his body. She looked away from the vampire before her and then back, her lower lip in her teeth. "Well, ain't that the million dollar question? I don't know what to do back here and I'm sure as hell not interested in going back to Claudine and the rest of them for a time yet."

Eric's brow lifted and a frown darkened his expression, "I can't say I'm unhappy to hear that, Miss Stackhouse. I think you need time away from the Fae to understand your place there, what you've been taught, and what you haven't. When they come for you the next time, I suggest you ask questions before you leave with them again."

Sookie closed her eyes and felt the hot tears pool behind them again. "Damn it, why do you have to sound so sure of yourself and so smart?" She let the tears go this time, too tired to stop them, and too confused, too aware of walls going up in her mind and walls being knocked down and that she wasn't angry with Northman. She'd never been so grateful to be in the presence of a vampire in her life since being around a vampire meant she also didn't have the thoughts and emotions of someone else bumping into her own. Eyes still closed, she sighed about to lean forward with her elbows on her knees again when a cool hand touched her face. She tensed and then relaxed, letting Eric Northman wipe her face with his thumbs, never opening her eyes. On the third swipe she reached up and covered his huge hands with her small ones, shaking her head lightly in his grasp, "Eric, I don't want you to think I … I don't want to use… make you thin-."

"What I am thinking, Miss Stackhouse, is that you are exhausted, that you are confused, and that I am the one person in both the worlds you've been inhabiting who has shown any understanding of the position you're in and who you know will protect you. I want nothing of you, Miss Stackhouse, now or ever. that you don't wish to give but that is also a discussion for another time."

Sookie opened her eyes at that, shrugging her shoulders weighted down with his robe. "I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing here, Eric. I'm a waitress from a nothing town in the middle of nowhere who grew up thinkin' I was crazy. Now I'm told I'm somebody important, or so Claudine says. Tell me just what the hell in life is supposed to have prepared me for that? Tell me how I'm supposed to do the right thing for everybody when you have to tell me what my own damn common sense should have? And tell me wh-."

Eric, his warm, amused stare locked with Sookie's, counted to ten before he moved his tear-soaked thumbs from her lips. "Sometimes, Miss Stackhouse, there are very clear reasons why we can't hear our own common sense."

Sookie gave him a tight, lopsided smirk but showed that she understood his point by keeping her mouth closed, then used it to offer him a tiny, grateful smile and raised her finger for permission to talk. He withdrew his hands completely but took the one that had gestured toward him in both his own and kissed the back of her fingers. She didn't protest. In fact, after a moment she returned his grip. "I'm sorry. I had to take that out on somebody. It was always so quiet and calm where the Fae were that I just bit my tongue all the time, even when they half-ass explained things. It was always sunny. The sky was always blue with just enough clouds in it to be pretty. The water was always dead still. Hell, there weren't even any bugs but fireflies and butterflies."

Eric looked away from her, his eyes on the tapestry again. "It sounds perfectly… boring."

Sookie stared at him for a long moment, finally catching his eye, and then erupted into laughter that far exceeded in its intensity her prior grief and frustration. She finally caught her breath and sagged forward again, her exhaustion evident. She knew if Eric pulled her against him now she wouldn't fight him and if she knew that, Eric knew that. Damn him. Lips clenched, she sighed and waited and the sound she expected came, the sigh and hiss of silken sheets against Eric Northman's moving body, his firm hands on her shoulders as he pulled her down.

Damn it.

Well, she wasn't going to admit **that** to anyone else. The feel of the silk pillow under her head was a disappointment. She fought the frown back she hoped, successfully, and settled for the feeling of Eric Northman tucking her in, tucking her in into his huge, silk-sheeted FUCK ME bed surrounded by chandeliers and probably a drop-down padded headboard he only pulled down when he… literally had company. She giggled to herself and opened her eyes, half-afraid/half-hoping he'd still be naked.

He wasn't. He had another robe on, this one was blue/green and she wondered if he knew the effect it was having on his ey- SHIT - of course he did. Not that he needed anything to look sexi- Sookie stopped herself. She was too tired for this and she was well aware that there was enough Northman blood in her body thanks to his little trick, that sex-driven thoughts about him at this moment were inevitable and excusable and almost entirely his fault. Having him to blame, however, did not prevent her from leaning into his cool touch when he ran a soothing hand through her hair.

"I have business to attend to tonight, Miss Stackhouse. My home is yours. My bed is yours, and you'll find a vampire guard downstairs instructed to get you whatever you'd like when you awaken. I won't leave until she arrives."

Sookie gathered the last of her energy and pushed herself up onto her elbow. "I'm sorry about this. I don't think I've ever felt so rude in my whole life, and now you're being nothing but a gentleman."

Northman knelt down beside the huge bed until he was at eye level with the small woman now swallowed up by it and his robe and his sheets. "I'm always a gentleman, Miss Stackhouse, just one who's very clear about what he wants… when the time is right, that is."

Sookie smirked at him and just as it rippled unsteadily into a genuine, grateful smile she slid back to the pillow and began to drift off, her eyes tired and burning but her nose catching a whiff of patchouli as the she finally settled in for the night.

This time, Eric allowed himself the liberty of a chaste, impatient, and victorious kiss on Sookie Stackhouse's unresponding lips.

.


	4. Chapter 4

"She what!"

"Out of nowhere. I woke up and she was in my bedroom, wearing my best robe, and as confused as I was at first."

"Eric, she could have staked you."

"Trust me… that was the last thing on her mind." Eric smiled thinly. "She came to apologize for her behavior the night she disappeared and share some vision one of the Fae she's been with had had about the two of us."

Pam raised an eyebrow. "One of the Fae? Well, was she staking you in that? Honestly, Eric, given what went on between vampires and the Fae, I don't know how I feel about her being anywhere near you now that she's been with them. Her last little rant here wasn't one that could warm a cold, dead heart."

Eric pushed back from his desk and put his feet up on it. This was why he'd come here, for Pam, with a chilling combination of love and suspicion, to help him clear his head. While he'd been unsuspecting of Sookie before now, Pam was making a good point. His thoughts were sometimes ridiculously skewed when he was around Sookie Stackhouse and Pam would take on God and the Devil at the same time to protect him and not merely because she was his childe but because a century of (sometimes gleefully on her part) facing the same enemies had made her more. If there was anything that could distract him it was, on occasion, a woman – but Pam had never seen any human as much more than a meal that usually came in the form of a sex toy. He twitched his hips slightly as he looked over at her on the couch, parts of him suddenly missing being part of her playtime, he supposed because she had that mother-tiger glow in her eyes. Even if her own preference might have been on the other side of the bar, Pam would grant his Sookie-lust a lengthy pity fuck – with all the vampire trappings – she'd just smile up at him and make sure he knew it while she did.

Pam was glaring, wondering why Eric was taking so long to respond at her implication that his dear Sookie was some sort of Fae double agent. "Did the blood stop roaring in your ears long enough for you to-?"

"I heard you, my dearest. That's why I came here, for you to think for me."

Pam rolled her eyes but he could tell she was secretly flattered. "I'll stake her myself if anything happens to you. Slow."

"I'll take that to my True Death as a comfort if she does." Eric smiled over at her but then sobered. "I don't think you need to worry. She was lost and confused and the moment I planted a doubt in her about the Fae's intentions, she felt as if she could be betrayed again. I've taken blood from her, don't forget, and she's had enough of mine that she can't lie to me without my knowing something. In any case, the vision she shared was just the opposite - the other Fae saw her caring for me when I'd been damaged but also that I'd be protecting her and she would finally be properly appreciative."

Pam smirked and ran two fingers over her lips, swiping at the lipstick that matched her blood-red bustier and leather skirt. "Was she? And am I old enough to hear the rest of that vision, Master?"

"I'm afraid the extent of our contact was my kneeling before her while we mutually clung to one another in some sort of forest."

Pam rolled her eyes with feeling this time. "Well, it's a start, just make sure she doesn't have a pointy branch in the hand you can't see." Pam's flippant expression morphed into one of pointed concern. "She's been with the Fae, Eric. That's all I'm saying. I would have said a few months ago that I don't think Sookie would ever knowingly harm you but after the past few months and the fact she's been off with a race Vampires damn near slaughtered – I want you to be careful. Keep in mind they could even be using her without her knowing; the Fae get off on all that mystical bullshit."

"She was vulnerable when she came to them. I warned her of that myself. She's free of Compton now, wasting her time with him means she's already filled her quota of foolish choices."

Pamela Ravenscroft sniffed a laugh and came to her feet. "I assume you want me to close up so you can go back home? Do you want me to send in some dinner for you or do you think you've finally got a chance to indulge in your four-star fairy feast?"

"Jealous, Pam?" He stood, a wicked, affectionate smile on his face, then came from behind the desk and sat down before her on its edge.

"No, because if things turn out the way you want, I assume you'll make part of the deal letting me have the occasional nibble. I am family after all. Otherwise it'd be like taking me to New York and telling me no Neiman Marcus."

"No promises but I would put in a good word for you."

"Bastard," she snapped but she was smirking an instant later then just as quickly sobered. "I mean it. I'll kill her if you so much get splinter but if you're safe and she gives you some sort of… pleasure I'm sure I can tolerate her. And what do I tell Nan Flanagan about your not being available tonight?"

"Tell her that one more night won't matter because Russell sure as hell isn't going anywhere."

Pam growled her disapproval that Russell Edgington was still even in existence, then leaned forward and kissed Eric at his hairline. "What about dinner? O-neg or something more exotic? There's a stunning Vietnamese girl out here who must put cinnamon in everything she eats."

"Really? Well, send her in. I have a feeling it's going to be a long night. And send Ginger in when she leaves. I need her to run an errand."

*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/*/

Sookie smiled at the warm scent that entered her nostrils, rich, earthy, spicy, and clean and the feel of silk beneath her cheek and neck. The blanket around her was thick and warm and heavy. She hated to move but finally did so, taking in the carved posts of the bed and the chandelier overhead with a rueful smirk as she rolled over. Of all the places to return to the world, she had ended up in Eric Northman's bedroom. She hoped the Universe was enjoying the joke. She sat up fully, ready to clutch the robe around her again, and discovered Eric had left the heat on. She hoped it was a room-only thermostat. She'd hate to think of him paying to heat this whole place just for her. Admittedly, she'd only seen the bedroom but if the rest of the house was on its scale she was in the middle of a sizable hunk of real estate. An involuntary smile came to her face as she imagined being the person who sold it to him. 'Why, yes, Mr. Northman, we can find a contractor to soundproof the basement and the master bedroom. Do you want that work done before you move in?' She giggled to herself and wiggled over to the side of the bed, dropping her feet down to the floor and wincing. It was not much warmer than she remembered.

She walked the distance to the door and stopped. The only light on the security panel was flashing green and doing so above a label that read "Standby". Crossing mental fingers, she reached for the knob, which turned silently in her hand and opened onto a corridor that trailed straight out before the door. No doubt for safety, for that gain of one more second of notice while he would be totally vulnerable, his room was all the way at the end of the dark hallway. She shut the door behind her as she went slowly past the other rooms. The first to her right appeared to be a linen closet but the door to the next stood open. The bathroom lay behind it and from the look of it was sizable enough to have hosted a Roman bathing orgy, albeit a small one. She couldn't stop herself and, since the door was open didn't feel it was too much of an invasion, went just inside the entry. The bathtub as right out of a honeymoon suite and the mirrors on the wall only made the place seem bigger. It was a rich blur of dark marble and gold fixtures. The lack of windows she expected. Pursing her lips, Sookie backed out of the room, on her way out seeing the control switch for the heated tile floor. For someone who was supposed to be dead - Eric Northman sure knew how to live.

When she reached the wide stairway, she hesitated, wishing she could see the rest of the house but without Eric's permission – well, Gran had taught her better than that and then there was the possibility that there were things that she might **not** want to find considering she'd be poking around in the home of a thousand-year-old vampire. Halfway down the stairs, to her relief since Eric had not been heating the entire house, she felt the unmistakable heat of a fire heading upward. It brought with it the smell of burning hardwoods. Sookie followed the warmth and the scent, turning to her right at the foot of the stairs, crossing the rich, marble tones of the foyer, and turning again to follow the hallway next to the stairs to the origin of the heat still wafting past her.

The door to what looked like a den was open and her lips tightened when she saw Eric inside, seated behind a desk not dissimilar to the one in his Fangtasia office, a leather bound book open in his hands. He was wearing an unbuttoned black dress shirt over a dark blue tank top and dark blue pants. The walls were lined with books similar to the one in his hands, some obviously very old, and model ships lined a shelf at her eye-level that circled the room. Over the fireplace directly opposite the door, a portrait hung, a landscape of what she knew had to be Eric's homeland.

The rest of the furniture in the room, aside from the desk, was upholstered in rich tones of wine. Metal goblets stood ready on the fireplace mantle and below the portrait were two heavy swords, both polished and gleaming, hanging point-to-point. Two pair of lances stood on either side of the tan marble of the hearth, each tall enough to reach three-quarters of the way up to the twelve-foot ceiling. Sookie stopped exploring the room with her eyes and closed her mouth from where it had drifted slowly open. She didn't set one foot inside of the room, for no other reason that it was a room one didn't enter uninvited. More than the bedroom he would be inclined to share, this room was more than anything she had seen of his… **Eric's**. As if she were a vampire, it was entirely up to Northman if she were to be invited in.

Eric laid the book on the desk slowly, sensing her presence, of course, and sensing also the reason for her hesitation. That she respected the privacy of his inner sanctum while at the same time wearing a robe under which he was usually naked struck him as so typical of Sookie Stackhouse that he was unable to hide the amusement slowly overtaking his mind. Here was a woman who could get inside the minds of others but who, for the most part, clung to her sense of Southern gentilities and manners while she did. He came to his feet, extending his hand as he closed on her, a corner of his mouth lifting slightly with irony. "Sookie, would you please come in?"

A nervous smile flitted over her lips but she took the hand he offered and let him lead her to the plush sofa facing the fireplace. "I thought you had work to do tonight."

"I did but I left Pam in charge at Fangtasia and a message for Nan Flanagan that I'd see to her requests when I chose. She won't admit it but she owes me."

Sookie nodded, sat down and watched him do the same, facing her, surprised when he suddenly bent over and picked up her bare feet to rest them on the seat cushion between them. "Not much of that heat makes it to the floor. There's no sense in your being uncomfortable; I have the feeling this could be a long night. I sent Ginger to your home for some of your clothing."

Sookie stopped wiggling her warming toes and stared up at him. "You what? How is she going to get in?"

Eric looked away from her and then over his shoulder as he stood up, smirking slightly from where he had gone to a shelf behind the desk. Suddenly she could hear the clatter of glass. He returned with a snifter of brandy and offered it to her. She hesitated for a moment and then took it, just to help her circulation. Eric sat down facing her on the opposite side of the couch and reclined back. "I have questionable connections, Sookie, you're well aware of that. How hard do you think it was for me to get someone to go to your home and make a key for the lock?"

Sookie's eyebrows shot up as the first hit of brandy went down her throat. "Eric, why in the name of God would you have a key made to my house? Even if I'm not there you couldn't go in. I remember I told all of you I rescinded your invitations."

"I wasn't intending on entering, Sookie. I was going to send a crew in and have Alcide supervise the clean up and renovation, just as a surprise for you. Weres aren't forbidden entry like vampires and I knew he was someone you'd trust in your home and who'd keep his mouth shut."

Sookie continued staring at him and took another hit of the brandy, empty stomach or not. After a few moments she sat back, her muscles unclenching but her lips twisted with confusion. "Damn it… why aren't I mad with you? I oughtta' be. Who the hell doesn't mind if someone gets a key made to their house and sends a bunch of strangers in?"

Eric Northman fought back a self-assured smile at her confusion with her own response. "Perhaps someone who has come to the realization that that someone else has their best interests at heart? I'm sorry you didn't come back in time for it to be done. I'd picked out some wonderful colors for your kitchen and living room."

Sookie rolled her eyes and took another hit of brandy, drawing her feet up closer to her body, disbelief at Eric's actions boiling through her but never coming to a full head of steam. "Oh, you had, had you? What about the bedroom? Tara and her boyfriend had a really fun time making a mess in there."

"I could pick that out if you wanted, Miss Stackhouse, but I suppose you'll want to avoid any color in the "eggshell" family."

Sookie's mouth fell open and her eyes blazed at him twice, reflecting the fire and burning with indignant fury. He felt her flare of temper through his blood and just as suddenly her frustrated surrender. "Well, I guess I woulda' gotten over it after I made you repaint everything different and it woulda' been a nice thing to hold over your head every time you'd try to convince me that you weren't like Bill tryin' to control me. Now I just can't wait to see what the hell Ginger What's-Her-Name comes back here with thinkin' it'll be decent." She finished off the brandy with a flourish, her face now flushed in a way that was causing Eric Northman to consciously keep his fangs in place. Between the alcohol and her welcome show of temper and then, much to his surprise, acceptance - she was now the Sookie he remembered most fondly. Rest had done her a world of good. What it hadn't done was solved her other need, a fact that became audible when her stomach grumbled around the alcohol.

Eric stood up and crossed back to his desk, opening up a laptop she hadn't noticed amidst the other items on it, the leather-bound books, the decorative quill pen, the short stacks of papers held down by carved glass paperweights in the shape of rams' heads.

Twenty-three minutes later, Sookie Stackhouse stood just in the foyer at the bottom of the long staircase, biting the inside of her lips to keep a fit of laughter she couldn't help from disrupting the scene before her. The teenage boy was weak-willed and confused enough already when he got to the front door that, for a thousand year old vampire, handling him was nothing. Even though it meant Eric overcoming another person's mind and will without their permission, Sookie could remember fewer sights in her life that had struck her funnier than Eric Northman, six-foot-four Viking Vampire, the imposing undead Sheriff of Area Five glamouring a five-foot-two greasy-haired, slack-jawed pizza boy to forget how he'd gotten to the huge home with a ten-foot tall set of doors.

For good measure, Eric ordered him to delete the record of the order when he got back to work. After a few drugged "Yes, sirs" Brandon (according to his name badge) wandered down to his pizza-decorated car and drove off, barely knowing how to get back through the trees to the highway. Sookie didn't bother to watch. She snared the flat red, green and white box out of Eric's hands and scuttled back to her warm spot before the fire, inhaling two slices before slowing down. "Stupid fairy food. I miss the water, that was great, but I don't even remember what I ate there, if I did. God, I feel like I'm being a pig but it's not like you'd even be able to eat one bite." She finished the third slice, trying to ignore his amused stare, and finally felt full enough to close the lid. She sat back and picked up her drink off the coaster on this side table. "I'll pay you for the pizza. I didn't exactly have time to get cash on my way… back." She rolled her eyes and settled back on the sofa, wondering where either of them would begin and figuring she only had about six hours before Eric would be out for the count again.

"Consider it a poor substitute for your welcome home gift since I didn't have time to restore your house to its proper state." Eric answered, the half-smile not leaving his face. He couldn't have cared less about twenty dollars for a pizza but knew that she did. He'd have to find an excuse to provide it. He was about to ask if there was anything else she wanted when Pam waltzed in, a paper bag in her hands. He'd felt her coming; he just hadn't known she was this close. He half wondered if Pam had developed some means of blocking him so that she could enjoy the look on his face or those in his company when she barged into a room. She glanced down at the pizza box and grimaced then looked down at Sookie where she sat on the couch, clutching the Diet Coke to her chest and Eric's dark, heavy robe.

"Welcome back, Sookie."

Sookie offered her a smile and let out a breath. "Thanks." Sookie's smile faded slightly and her eyes widened. Just past Pam's tightly upturned, brightly painted lips, her fangs were out, just enough that they could be seen, but out, and her eyes were narrowed.

Eric's gaze followed Sookie's and his face became stern. "Pamela, put Sookie's clothes on the desk and leave. I will summon you if I need you."

"Just make sure it's not too late. Please." Pam stomped over to the desk, dropping the bag with a small thud and letting herself out with a huff.

Eric watched her with an expression of frustration and understanding and finally looked over at Sookie Stackhouse. "She believes I might be in danger from you because you've been with the Fae. I've been told she'll be staking you if anything happens to me. Don't be too upset with her, the bond one has with a Maker can be -," his voice trailed off as Sookie's expression softened.

"I've been around vampires long enough, Eric. I'm not offended and it's silly anyway. I'm no danger to you. What Bill told me about the Fae being nearly wiped out by vampires didn't even come up while I was… away. The only time you came up was when Claudine sent me back here. Oh, and when I first got there, they were worried about Russell when I told them there were vampires who knew I was a… I was one of them but I told them you'd done something to take care of that even if you wouldn't kill him. They did want to know why you didn't."

Eric sat up straighter, leaning toward her slightly. "What did you tell them?"

"That you said you'd had a vision of your maker, Godric who'd told you not to. They seemed pretty surprised by that, no more than the rest of us. Eric, what the hell **did** you do with that loon? I don't want him still able to get to me."

A thin, mirthless smile danced across Eric Northman's long, pale, chiseled face, "Let's just say he's… having a hard time of it and should be long past your natural life."

Sookie's eyes narrowed, remembering her last night here in her reality, of Eric's appearance on her front porch. "You buried him in concrete? If he ever gets out he'll be even crazier."

"Yes, but he won't be your problem."

Sookie settled back against the plush sofa cushions. "Well, hold on. If you got out when Bill tried to do that to you, won't Russell have people working to get his sorry ass out, too?"

Eric shook his head and sat up, removing his dress shirt. "He should be in downtime now, a very deep one that'll prevent him from reaching out to any of vampire he's made and he was, it seems, mostly faithful to Talbot. But… I have the place where he's buried under surveillance, and so does the Authority. They're unhappy with me for not staking him but they're satisfied that he's not a problem and that he's still suffering gives them some measure of satisfaction."

Sookie shrugged slightly. "I think if I were him, I still rather would have been staked; I'm sure as hell glad Bill didn't get away with doing that to you."

"Compton sent someone to kill Pam also, one of my own people. She killed him instead then Bill got it in his head to go after Sophie Anne - the beauty of that being she dragged him into this in the first place."

Sookie frowned, unsurprised. "He said he was going to, right after he told me he'd killed you, because she knew what I was. I told him right then you'd never hurt me."

Eric's brow lifted in surprise and he leaned toward her. "Did you, Miss Stackhouse? I'm glad you finally believed me. It's unfortunate your change of heart was so short-lived."

Sookie looked over at him shyly, her mouth hanging open and a blush of mild embarrassment slowly overtaking her upturned face. "I don't know what to say to that, except I was just out of my mind. I guess you figured out what happened to Talbot – well, what was left of him. I was pretty much on a hair-trigger to go back into that state of mind and then Bill had scared the shit out of me so I guess anybody with fangs was off my Christmas list after that. I apologize again."

"For your words to me on your porch or for choking up my garbage disposal?" He offered the small woman a sly smile. "I do have to admit I minded the latter a great deal less when I realized… who was in there."

A half-smile cocked up the side of Sookie Stackhouse's mouth. "Well, I'm still not real proud of that moment but I sure as hell don't lose sleep over it. Sorry about mess, though."

"I'm only sorry I didn't get to see you make it and Edgington watch."

Sookie's smile upended itself into a self-directed sneer. "I'm not. I wouldn't have wanted anybody to see me in the state of mind he'd put me in. I think you were the only one of us who's had your head on straight through this whole thing but then, going by what Pam said that night, Russell'd killed your family. Did I hear that right?"

Eric froze for a moment and then turned to face the fire, turned so that she was looking at him in profile. Without his saying a word, she had her answer and she also knew he was now looking into a fire a thousand years in the past and couldn't decide whether to remain silent or offer him some word of understanding. She had certainly lost Gran under terrible circumstances but she'd still had people left and, bad as it had been, it certainly hadn't upended her entire world. She'd still had her friends, her job, Bill for what that had been worth then but she suspected that Eric had been left with nothing except a revenge that had taken a thousand years to finish. Unable to stop herself, she turned to face the fire as well, turned and slid over so that her legs now trailed down the side of the sofa where she'd been seated across from him. She leaned heavily on her right arm for a moment and then slowly settled her cheek against Eric Northman's shoulder and folded her wrists around his arm. He said nothing but his opposite hand settled on her crossed wrists.

He hadn't had to answer her question about Edgington; he knew that once again, she had put the pieces together – this time with Pam's unintentional help. That he'd used her to exact his revenge was something she'd forgive him for even more easily now. She'd come to terms with the fact that he'd had to string Edgington along by pretending to give her up to him, knowing that he'd been doing so to ultimately save her. Having kept his head while seeking revenge for his murdered family might well impress her even more. Of course, she'd made it possible to complete his plan by trusting him, even if she didn't remember. The vampire he'd become rankled at the sudden feeling of obligation experienced by the Viking he had long ago been – but there was no denying he owed her for his completed revenge.

Their companionable silence lasted for twenty minutes or so, during which time Sookie wrapped herself more closely around the well-muscled arm beneath her cheek. She finally lifted her head and sat up, folding her legs before her to continue to keep her feet off the chilly floor. Missing her weight and warmth, Northman turned to face her. She met his gaze with an expression that mixed confusion and resignation, her eyes clear but not knowing where to focus. He reached up, holding her jaw once again, "We need to talk, Miss Stackhouse. You're here for a reason. You can't ignore what you are or who you are any longer, and it seems that part of that is that we seem to somehow need each other. I don't have much faith in…," he stopped, smiling wickedly, "fairy tales… but if your mentor has some reason for sending you back and to me, I'll try to keep an open mind."

The smile that appeared on her face at his use of the term "fairly tales" stayed with her as he finished speaking, saying almost exactly what she believed he would. Sookie dropped her head sideways onto the tall back of the couch. "Hmph… try being told you're an actual… fairy." She snarled at the word and focused again, "Well, at least it explained why I could do the things I do. Truthfully, when you all came out, it was … a relief. Now I knew if anybody ever found out about me, I wouldn't be the strangest thing in the world anymore… and when I realized I couldn't read vampires, I finally had a way to have some peace in my head and still be able to have a conversation with someone. But then – lucky me – the first vampire I get to be around is Bill and… if I had been able to read his mind it would have saved me a whole lot of a different kind of grief."

Eric turned toward her, mirroring her posture in part as he folded one leg up onto the couch, "Sophie Ann is a spoiled, undisciplined, self-serving idiot but she was smart enough to bring Compton in here to procure you, in part to keep me from knowing about you as long as possible."

Sookie's eyes narrowed. "Why?"

"Because I'm smarter than she is. I would have known how to protect you properly, including from Sophie Ann herself, and I could have easily outmaneuvered her politically to do so – and I would have been honest with you from the start. That would have kept her or anyone from using you without your knowledge of what we believed you to be, not denied you your own place of power, and, by doing so, I assume I would have gained a formidable ally."

Sookie sighed and turned to stare at the fire for a long moment, then turned back to look at the powerful vampire before her, distracted momentarily by his physicality before her questions reasserted themselves. "That sounds too good to be true."

Eric leaned toward her slowly, taking up her hands, his voice suddenly much more intense. "It isn't. Ultimately you would have found out what you are and if you had been tricked and brutalized to bring you into our world, you would have had no reason to become part of it. Sophie Anne saw someone she could use in Compton, someone not out of her ability to control or outsmart. However, he was too young and too stupid, and too intent on his own agenda of humanizing himself, to keep from becoming attached to you, and then he couldn't handle that either."

Sookie sagged against the back of the sofa even more heavily, not tired but dispirited. "If I have to be like this, I'm… I'm glad you're around. Like I said, nothing's prepared me for finding out all this crap. I don't think I'll ever understand why Gran didn't tell me and let me think something was wrong with me all my life."

Eric's mouth twisted slightly, amused with himself and swallowed up by irony. Well, he had to give himself some credit for his powers of observation, of tactical thinking, and his skills and instincts as a parent/maker of someone who had, admittedly by his forcing them on her, come into their own with supernatural powers. He lifted up Sookie's hands and kissed them in turn, his eyes boring into her own. "I'm going to make a guess, Miss Stackhouse, that she did so out of her own innate sense of decency. You grew up thinking you were disabled and afflicted, that the downside of having your abilities lay with you and not those around you. By letting you think that, your… Gran… was ensuring that you didn't become a monster – someone who took from others what you wanted, using their own thoughts, weaknesses, and secrets against them. Of course, by doing so, she likely also saved your life and the lives of those who loved you. An ability like yours out in the open would have ultimately made you and your family a target."

Sookie stared at the vampire before her with a slow sense of amazement rapidly being joined by a bizarre sense of relief and then gratitude. Tears welled up in her eyes again and she let them fall. "I wonder if she ever would have told me. I was so unhappy so much of the time, so alone except for Jason and Gran, and then I'd have to watch Jason out almost every night, him and one new "friend" after the other – and all I'd want to do is hide even more. I did have Tara and that did help me start to learn how to block other people out just a little – she spent a lot of time unhappy about her momma and I couldn't take her unhappiness on top of my own." She looked back at the fire and sidled closer to Northman, suddenly wishing she could bury herself in his arms but holding back because the desire to look him in the eye was still greater. Eric turned his face into her palm when she leaned forward enough to touch him. "How come the vampire who likes to think he's the least human is the one who had to tell me all the reasons I had to be unhappy my whole life and then made it seem like it was the right thing to do?"

Eric Northman held himself in check through a will that took all of his thousand plus years of existence. He wanted to throw her down on the thick rug a few feet away and fulfill the waking dreams he'd had of her for months now but she was still so confused by all that was happening that her focus, far from being on wanting to be with him, was on the new piece of her life that he had clicked into place. Instead, he settled, for now, for meeting her eyes and taking in the sight of her tears and her now tightly drawn lips. "Perhaps because I see you the way your grandparent saw you, as someone she wanted to protect and spare from an untimely death. Your grandmother lacked my skills and resources, however - with me you can be who you are and still be safe, and respected. And if you are to be important to any event about to unfold, I can provide you guidance if you wish - on one condition."

She smiled nervously and gripped his cool arm in both hands as his fingers reached up to hold her chin and keep her gaze locked on his. "What's that?"

"That you understand that my motive when giving any advice will be what is in your best interest and not the best interest of whatever faction is trying to use or involve you or everyone else."

"You mean you'd be puttin' me first and thinkin' about what was best for me when there might be vampires and fairies and who knows what else squabblin' and schemin' and expectin' me to do somethin' about it?" A touch of playfulness had returned to her voice and the vampire did not miss it.

"Exactly, Miss Stackhouse, although I will probably be somewhat partial to your using your power in the interest of vampires."

"Well, I think I could live with that, and probably live a lot longer." She smiled at him again and when he brushed the tears from her face, none came to replace them. "Trouble is, Sophie Anne still knows what I am and Bill, and now what am I supposed to do about h-."

"Compton will no longer be a problem for you. If he attempts to be one; he will be given options and dealt with based on his choices, just be aware that if he attempts to harm you, I have the authority to -."

"I understand, Eric. He scared the hell out of me. If he thought he was gonna' kill you and any of the other vampires who knew about me, what would he have done if he even thought Jason or Tara or Sam knew? They're just human, well, most of them, but I don't think being a shifter would have been much help."

"Against a vampire, no – but I don't want you to worry about Compton. You have more than enough spinning about in that beautiful head, Miss Stackhouse, such as what you're planning to do now that you know who just who you are and most of what you can do."

Sookie looked from the fire itself to its reflection in the ice-colored eyes of the powerful vampire now seated close to her. "Most?"

"Most. I'm certain the Fae would never tell you all that you are or can do, not while your… connection to the vampire world still has, I hope, some positive connotations."

Sookie smiled up at him, not sure if the heat she was feeling was totally from the fire now. Something had happened in the last few minutes; she now felt liberated, empowered, and far surer of herself than she had in months. The smile twisted to one side. "Of all the places I could have shown up back in Bon Temps, I ended up back here… in your bedroom – the only person to tell me the whole truth in months."

She was too close. He only had so much control even after practicing it for a thousand plus years. He reached out and lightly stroked the side of her head, his cool fingers swiping through her hair. "Why thank you, Miss Stackhouse. Now we can think about moving forward. You know who and what I am, you know what you are and almost all of what you can do and I am prepared to deal with the reality that you are an intelligent, willful, and uncompromising ally. Of course, as you do know who I am, Miss Stackhouse, you also know that I consider you an intelligent, willful, uncompromising,… and very desirable… woman."

Sookie held herself still, save for the tiny movements of her skin as it pleasantly crawled all over her body. Warm before the fire and buried in Eric's robe, she felt a shiver travel through her. She flushed anew and for the first time definitively felt her own heat more than the fire's and saw Eric Northman in a way that didn't come mixed with reservations. There was coyness in her voice that caught even her by surprise when she spoke. "So I guess you would have offered me a job that had lots of… fringe benefits."

If his heart had been living – it would have been pounding. Eric redirected the hand toying with her hair to pull her face around to meet his. "I can think of any number of positions where we could mix business with a lot of very… intense… pleasure."

Sookie Stackhouse sat frozen, save for the fingers she was clenching into the soft fabric of the sofa. That Eric Northman could hear her heart beating was a given; there was also a chance he heard the sound of whatever suddenly snapped in her head and her lower core.

The only reason she didn't break something was because he was a vampire. Eric Northman fell back, barely having time to smile as he found himself the willing object of sudden and vigorous "assault". His stomach clenched under the scraping of Sookie's nails as she scrambled to divest him of the dark blue tank top, the contraction sending a secondary rush of blood just where he knew he'd be needing it very shortly. The only thing that slowed him as he rose up to let her pull the tank top over his head was a bout of mild delirium as the scent of her almost violent arousal on his heightened senses.

His belt was gone. Somehow. That was good. If he didn't move fast enough lifting his hips to let her yank down his trousers he was afraid she'd find the same use for the leather strap that Pam used to make of it. Grinning as he arched up from the sofa cushion, he looked down to see Sookie's hands at his hips, hovering for a moment before she slid her fingers into the waistband of his pants and forced herself to slow down and allow them both to savor the moment. She let him hang in the slightly awkward position a few seconds longer and then hooked her fingers around the top of the material and began to move downward, leaning forward so her tongue traveled just behind the retreating material. When she felt the first tickle of his lower hairs, she lifted her head and sat back on her heels, looking up at the glassy-eyed vampire. "You waited all this time, I'm going to make this worth your patience. " She kept her eyes on him and pulled the pants down the rest of the way. Eric sat frozen, eyes glowing with heat, determined to hold himself back to make this all last as long as possible. The pain was so exquisite; the relief was going to be unimaginable. Sookie looked from his eyes down to his now free and quivering erection as she finally dropped his robe to the floor and revealed the fitted, tiered golden dress she had worn in the Fae realm. She lifted the hem and reached up, liberating herself of her panties and tossing them so that they landed on his face, sending a shock through him via his olfactory senses that made a small surge of pre-cum erupt from his erection.

Eric Northman took a totally unneeded breath after the panties had fallen into his lap, realizing that she'd almost made him come without even touching him. He glared up at his Fae telepath and then down at her as he took her hand and stood, almost stumbling as she lead him to the plush rug just before the fire. He didn't ask; he stretched out on the floor and waited, never breaking eye contact with Sookie Stackhouse as she moved between his legs, lowered herself down on her haunches, spread his legs even further and dropped to her knees. Eric looked from her eyes down to her still clothed body, wishing his hands that now clutched the plush rug had something far better to do. Sookie offered him a sultry smile from her advantageous position, stroking his twitching thighs slowly. "Don't worry, you'll get your turn, but you deserve a reward for being honest with me, for saving my life, and for treating me like I had some sense of my own, even when I didn't. So… you just relax and let me thank you properly."

Eric drew himself up to his elbows, holding the teasing gaze of the willful, intelligent, uncompromising, and very desirable woman on her knees between his parted legs. This was against his nature, to restrain himself, to be even semi-passive while a woman he wanted offered herself for his pleasure – but then everything about Sookie Stackhouse had broken his pattern from the moment he had laid eyes on her and realized she was something different, something more, and something he had to have. There was little wrong that he could find in the fact that she was about to have him.


	5. Chapter 5

Sookie Stackhouse sat back on her heels, wondering what to do next. Perched between Eric Northman's quivering knees and before his impatiently twitching erection she knew she did have to move fast if she wanted to maintain control of the situation. She damn well knew he could seize her at any moment and reverse their positions… and seriously ramp up the speed at which they finally consummated months of mutual intended and unintended torment, even if she also knew he wanted their first time to be her idea. He only had so much control, however, and knowing that she finally moved, straightening up to hover over him, her entrance inches from his erection… and began running her fingernails down his long flanks, over the sides of his rib cage and down to his hips, to the inside juncture where his legs hung open.

Eric moaned and writhed just a bit, his back arching, his abdomen clenching, as much from the knowledge that Sookie was just getting started with him as the barely there, but oh-so-powerful, effect of her fingertips and nails. The moaning triggered a surge of arousal in her that caused him to lose control of his fangs as soon as the scent found him. They snapped down and into his lower lip, cutting it cleanly. Before the pain had even registered, another feeling did, the feeling of Sookie's lips surrounding the small wound and sucking at it for all she was worth.

The feel of his blood entering her mouth and then her body sent another shock of arousal through the blond vampire. His eyes rolled back in his head and he was dimly aware of her hands returning to play at his sides and the tight ridges of his stomach and down close to where he knew they both wanted her to be in other ways. For the first time in his life and non-life he regretted being so tall and lean. From his chest and sides down to the top of the she had just too much damn room to play right now.

Eric looked up at her as she finally sat back and reached down to either side of him to continue her feather-light, groan-inducing strokes on the underside of his open thighs and found himself cursing the length of those as well. Focusing on her face, he saw his blood was running down her chin, a seductive sight in and of itself but he regretted even a drop was being wasted, … or so he thought until she wiped it off with one finger that then disappeared between her legs. It reappeared a creamy shade of pink as their fluids mixed. She leaned forward again and brought the digit near to his already waiting, gaping mouth, pricking her finger on his left fang before inserting it all the way. The swirl of her blood, his blood, and the fluids of her arousal struck his tongue like an electric wire.

Sookie Stackhouse felt a giggle of revenge struggling to escape her as she watched the all-powerful Eric Northman twist and grimace beneath her, sucking her finger clean and making a sound that was somewhere between a grunt and a scream. She was thoroughly enjoying herself and the rush of power, even more because she was all too aware it was power he was willingly giving her – albeit for his own enjoyment – well, at least mostly he was enjoying it. The Viking in him was probably wanting to turn the tables and fuck her senseless for revenge but the vampire who had long waited for their union was capable of a great deal more control, not that she wasn't straining it now.

Well, this was payback for all the times he'd come onto her, knowing she was Bill's, and then sending her into horny heaven with dreams from drinking his blood, only to wake up very wet and very alone during the day (when she was working the night shift at Merlotte's) or very wet and with Bill unwilling to satisfy her because it was a dream of Eric that had gotten her that way.

Sookie pouted. A real man- well, vampire, would have driven Eric out her head with real sex instead of leaving her laying there thinking about him. Idiot. Smirking at the realization, Sookie leaned up, having to use both the length of her still clothed torso and thighs to reach Eric's ear. She licked the rim of it and pulled back a little to whisper in it as she waved her now cleaned and healed finger in front of him. "That's for making a key to my house. Imagine what I'd do to you if I'd come home and had found it all remodeled."

Eric stilled himself, focusing on her with eyes almost black from lust. "Don't worry, Miss Stackhouse. If this is your means of disciplining me for behavior that troubles you, I can't wait to fully anger you or find out what the reward for pleasing you must be."

Sookie wet her lips and slowly sat back again, her fingers, including the moist one, trailing back over his chest and stomach. She was dizzy herself. How the hell could one man – vampire - be this gorgeous – much less offer himself up as hers, much less offer himself up as hers and understand her so damned well after such a short time?

Her trailing fingers went close to where he wanted and he growled, hissing in a needed and unneeded breath. Sookie looked down and saw that the prior amount of pre-cum had tripled. The gleaming streak of fluid ran down the front of his erection and pooled in the cluster of fine golden hairs at its base. She dipped her fingers into it and rubbed both hands together, watching Northman's face as she slowly gripped his penis and worked one hand one way and one the other, barely providing enough friction for him to feel, teasing him as she had along his ribs, waist, and straining hips.

Sookie looked down and realized that both of her hands didn't even cover his length and that her lower hand couldn't even encompass his girth. The fact of his proportions made a new wave of arousal charge through her as she imagined what he was going to feel like inside of her and in response his thighs suddenly twitched and closed around her. "Just a warning, Miss Stackhouse, I won't be able to take this much longer, agonizingly pleasant as it is. I also can't imagine you're gaining the satisfaction that you very certainly could."

"Satisfaction can be a lot of things, Mr. Northman… You stretched out naked in front of me on this big old fuzzy rug in front of a fire, why that'd be enough to make most women come just thinkin' about it. That you could turn me inside out with one hand tied behind your back and you're laying there letting me have my way – for now - well that's another very satisfyin' thing. What I get from anticipating what's gonna' happen for both of us, we'll that's one more thing… the idea of what'll happen once it does happen – we'll that's a thing almost too good a thing to imagine. You see how many ways you satisfy me, Mr. Northman?"

The corner of Eric Northman's mouth lifted in an almost successful rendition of the smirk that had often aggravated her into a seriously horny irritation. He was too frustrated now for it to be at its best. "Put that way, I am flattered by your admission of what the mere sight of me bare and ready for you in every conceivable way does for your sense of satisfaction. I am hoping you'll return the favor at some point or do you also gain satisfaction by testing my resolve to rip that dress from you?"

"That, too." She smiled down at him, wiggling her ass against his heels and sending her fingers down to stroke his rock hard testicles. She had the mercy not to squeeze the rigid organs too tightly and moved to let her fingers playing in the soft, tender crevices between them before venturing down further and then teasing her way back up. She licked the pre-cum that escaped the engorged head of penis this time, then looked up and saw him rigid everywhere else as well. His thighs clenched her hips and he levered himself up from the dark rug, the first hint of danger in his eyes. Sookie withdrew her hands from his intimate regions and gripped his face gently. She gave his tongue entrance the moment it asked, a foreshadowing promise of what was to come elsewhere. By way of persuasion, he nicked his own tongue before it slid into her mouth, reinforcing his words of impatience with his blood, letting her taste and absorb his desire. He didn't want this night to end either, but he wanted to get his own share of satisfaction in before the dawn laid claim to him. She could stroke and observe his nakedness then, toy with him as she wished – and spare him the frustration while she did and to hell with Pam's worries that she'd stake him while he was vulnerable. She had him at her mercy now.

Sookie returned the favor of his blood with her own, pricking her tongue on a fang and feeling a surge of lust go through her that originated much further south than the rest. She realized it was Eric's lust mixed with her own and felt a gloating stab of pity for him as she pushed him back down and moved her legs out from between his to straddle his waist. She grazed the head of his penis as she did so and his hips bucked beneath her as she finished moving into position.

Sookie lowered herself carefully, committed to a final tease, moving onto his erection so that she could look down and see it cradled at the apex of her thighs and her sex. She gently clenched her thighs and rubbed her clit against him, at the same time circling the head of his penis with her thumb. Eric writhed at the bizarre sensation of being held within her, although he wasn't, while she still had liberty to play with small, throbbing, hyper-sensitized, marvelously tortured mound of flesh at the end of his penis. She tightened her hold on him firmly, now powered with his blood and made her next move. She glanced up. smiling coyly, to see if he was watching as she reached for her drink. Before he had time to guess her intentions, she was rubbing the head of his penis with a surviving cluster of ice, trapped as it was between her blond curls and her thighs. The shock of cold vs. the heat of where she clasped him was the second time he felt as if she'd touched a live wire to his body. Vampires were cold – but not **that** cold and the rush of her arousal as she "assaulted" him was as powerful as the physical sensation.

Sookie moved quickly when she felt him clenching and heard that sound from him again that mixed groan and scream. Wet enough for every fangbangers that ever lusted after him, she raised up, grasping him with her hand one more time to guide his entrance and met his sudden upward thrust with her own downward plunge. The pain that came from the violent move for both of them vanished in an instantaneous orgasm.

Eric Northman could not remember a time in his human or vampire life when he had lasted only as long as it took him to bury himself in the woman on the receiving end of his thrust. His hips surged upward, throwing his fairy down onto his chest. It seemed as if the only reason she didn't fly off of him was the grip her internal muscles had on his exploding erection. Her head fell past his own as she dug her nails into his shoulders, leaving him no room to bring his fangs to her neck if he'd even remembered to do so. His entire being had focused for a few blinding moments on the wild surge of energy spilling out between his straining legs. Sookie groaned in his ear as his arms closed around her and his hands coiled around the collar of her dress.

When the blackness and the stars faded from her eyes, Sookie realized, with a smile and without surprise, she was mostly naked. Eric had ripped her dress in half behind her. The force of his hands now trapped her hips but the vampire blood was preventing her from bruising. Her breath was as ragged as her dress and she raised herself up, levering her backside so that Eric came free of her intimate grip. She managed a small, satisfied whimper as she did, tossing the remains of the golden frock somewhere away from the fire to her left. Sookie sighed as she slid down onto the thick rug, sagging against the broad, unmoving chest of the vampire.

Eric Northman felt a smattering of shock and then amazement and then gratitude that he'd been surprised by sex for the first time in too long to remember, which for a vampire with almost perfect recall was a humbling (yet in this case welcome) experience. The force that had traveled through him was indescribable and left him hoping that it was not just the result of it being his first time with Sookie Stackhouse. If letting her provide such wondrous torment was the price of the orgasmic whiteout he'd just experienced, he'd give himself over to her every time and he'd have to change her mind about being turned. The idea of living without her and without what he'd just felt for the rest of eternity was unbearable. He smiled up at her as Sookie propped herself up on one elbow and leaned down to kiss him lightly on the chest. He stroked her sweat-damp hair and pulled her closer. "That, my lover, was worth dying, being turned, and then waiting for a thousand years to experience."

"Well, that's no fair. How do I come up with a compliment to top that? I want to. I s'pose that counts." She swatted him playfully and wiggled her hips, feeling her still sparking vagina shrinking back to its normal size, her first orgasm tainted by thousand year old vampire blood making her aware of every tiny sensation as it did. She blushed thinking to herself that it felt like she could have parked Eric's 'Vette inside of her he'd stretched her so wide so fast, but then she only had herself to blame.,, and… thank. She'd learned the ice trick from an issue of "Cosmopolitan" that she'd picked up after taking up with Bill, with an article in it titled "Ways to Still Surprise Your Vampire Lover – Even If He's Centuries Old". At a guess, no one Eric had been with had read the article. Bill she'd been too restrained with yet to try it on but it was different with Eric… very. She'd felt free to do whatever she'd wanted and no need fit into a category a pre-Victorian vampire found "proper" and, of course, Bill certainly had never left her feeling like she could be used for a parking space. She blushed again and couldn't stop the giggle as the thought passed through her head. This time, Northman wanted an explanation.

Sookie Stackhouse could only meet his demanding eyes for a split second after the tiny laugh escaped her and she buried her face in his chest and shook with laughter, unable to speak. Tears were leaking from her eyes when she finally looked up and knew she wasn't getting out of an explanation. Her blush deepened and she yelped when he finally struck her bare backside and sent a shiver through her. "Talk to me, Woman. At least tell me I would appreciate the cause of your amusement."

"Oh, you'd love it. I swear… I swear. I was just…," she erupted into giggles again and this time he pinched her and caught her hand before it reached his nipple to reciprocate. Chastened, feeling pleasantly trapped physically but now liberated in her head, she pulled herself together, the blush still surrounding her lips. "I was comparin' you to Bill and how I felt "down there" when we were done instead of how I feel now… and you know that bed of yours upstairs that says "Fuck Me" and that car of yours that says "Fuck Me"? Northman nodded, his lips starting to curl upward.

"Do go on, Miss Stackhouse."

"Well, it just crossed my mind that "down there" felt like you could have … used me for its garage."

She'd heard Eric snicker before… usually at her or Bill's expense and at Russell Edgington. She'd never heard him laugh before… and this time he exploded with it. He shook her as he roared, pulling her on top of him. She went willingly, her tongue entering his mouth when he finally calmed. He reciprocated then pushed her back, enjoying the feel of her hands tangling in his hair. "You bring all kinds of joy, my lover, and that compliment, if you insist on competing, certainly equaled my own. Now, may I assume that I'm entitled to a parking pass or do you intend to charge me by the -AGH! You will move your knee this instant!"

Sookie obeyed him, straddling his prostrate form with her own, her right knee no longer pressing his semi-flaccid penis into his pubic bone. She slid off him on the side facing the fire and felt its heat travel across the back of her body. Her hand reached down to stroke the offended organ and she leered up at him, "I'm sorry, Baby. I could put some ice on that for -."

Sookie found herself underneath him an instant later, his tongue thrusting past the smile still on her face, exploring her mouth eagerly and deeply before he levered himself off of her, shaking his head slowly. "I will decide what goes where next, Miss Stackhouse. That seems only fair."

"Fine by me. I think even if the last half hour or so was my idea – you still managed to leave me not thinkin' straight. You go ahead and decide whatever you want; I got a feelin' I'll be just fine with it."

"Remember my "Fuck me" bed, as you called it?"

"Remember it? Hell, when Claudine helped me get back here and I ended up in your room - that's where I found myself, sittin' there with you stark naked."

Eric pushed himself off of her reluctantly but pulled her up with him. "As someone who has been around over a thousand years, Lover, let me assure you that history has a habit of repeating itself but I intend to be able to appreciate your presence this time. Shall we?" He reached for her, about to lift her into his arms when she ducked back.

"Hold on a minute, Big Boy. I'll need my strength." She stepped back, snatching up the box containing the rest of the pizza. She kept hold of the box behind his head once she allowed him to scoop her up off the floor. He used his vamp-speed to take them back to the still warm bedroom. Sookie aimed carefully and dropped the pizza so that it landed flat on the hardwood floor next to the bed and following its descent, she landed flat on her back in the middle of the dark satin sheets, shifting the grip of her legs on Northman's waist to around the back of his thighs.

That he was erect already was no surprise and a vampire recovery trait she had come to appreciate even if her first exposure to it had been Bill Compton. She knew without asking that Eric's recovery time was a fraction of Bill's, however, and wiggled her hips in anticipation as he held himself above her. She could feel the muscles beneath the skin of his legs flexing and stretching as he positioned himself to enter her. She threw her head back and closed her eyes, losing track of whose lust was whose as he teased her entrance, waiting for him to proceed. Seconds later, she opened her eyes, looking up at him with a glare of suspicion. "I thought you were makin' all the decisions about what went where."

"Well, I'm Sheriff, Ms. Stackhouse. There are rules I'm expected to enforce." His hips flexed near her heels. He backed off and teased her with his swollen cock again, drawing a squeak from her. "I don't want to have to write myself a parking ticket."

Sookie smiled tightly. "I should have so lied to you. I'll never hear the end of this."

Northman grinned, "You can't lie to me, Sookie. That's what makes sharing blood so special between a vampire and a human he desires."

Sookie glanced away from him, her expression suddenly growing troubled. "I know this isn't the time for this but you brought it up. I shared blood with Bill plenty of times, one time too many when the bastard almost drained me… and he was still able to fool me and lie to me. I'm not saying you are at all… I just want to know why he could."

Eric forced himself to relax, withdrawing his fangs and lowering himself down beside her. "I created this delay. I'll pay the price for a few moments and answer you. Somehow I don't mind talking about Compton while you're in my bed and we're talking about how right I was… which is why you didn't trust him, why you came to me before I took on Russell, and how ultimately inadequate and utterly stupid he was." Eric traced her jaw with one finger. "He started off intending to deceive you. He was foolish enough to let himself fall in love with you against his mission and then couldn't face what he'd done and couldn't defy Sophie Anne. He was so entangled in deceptions that he no longer knew what the truth was – blood or no blood. I am truly sorry I was not in a position to intervene before you were harmed in any way."

"It wasn't your fault – although maybe you might have made more trustworthy impression if you weren't in the same condition you are now the first time I ever had a real conversation with you." A teasing smile came to her face as she lightly fingered his cock.

Eric, twitching, grinned and slid back into position above her. "Well, if we're done talking about Compton, would you care to do something about that condition now?"

Sookie Stackhouse smirked up at the gorgeous being on his hands and knees above her, his erection hovering just at her entrance. Unwilling to let him tease her any longer or let the dozens of questions still in her head distract her, she slid her legs around him again and dug her heels into his back with glee, pulling herself up and impaling herself on his waiting member with a sudden clench of her thighs. Above her, Northman growled and hissed in delight then began thrusting in and out of her slowly and deliberately, lowering himself to his elbows and circling his hips once he was buried into her as deeply as he could be.

Sookie hooked her arms around the vampire's back as he came closer, meeting his thrusts at first and then freezing when he began to rotate gently inside her, slowly easing himself further into her than she'd imaginedpossible. She panted and bit her lip, feeling her orgasm building half from the powerful physical sensations and half from her realizations of just how far into her he'd reached. Eric hissed above her as her internal muscles began to ripple around him, squeezing him for all they were worth, and having been stretched out so taut, they were eager to close back in on him. Eric felt her tighten and resumed thrusting again as she tightened, drawing a cry of pleasure from them both.

Her teeth gritted, Sookie was in no position to open her mouth to Eric's tongue as it brushed against her lips. He moved on, his tongue tracing her jawline and stopping at the place he wanted to be - where the skin between him and her jugular was thinnest. He suckled it gently, still thrusting into her tightening channel down below as she moaned and turned her head to the side, giving him permission and freeing one arm from clutching his back to gripping the back of his head. She stroked his hair in time with his pumping into her below.

Eric hesitated before biting her, wishing he could make the next few moments last forever. He would be taking in his first taste of Sookie's hybrid fairy blood while they were both in the throes of passion, moments from orgasm. Sookie gathered what was left of her wits and looked up at him, her lower lip in her teeth, knowing what was going through her mind. The hand in his hair slipped down so that her fingers could brush his parted lips and then move to stroke his fangs. Her other hand came away from his back as well, slipping between them to playfully scratch her nails through his pubic hair, the tickling sensation adding to the surges of sensation already present.

Playing each other like fine instruments, they each drew the other closer to orgasm as long, mesmerized moments passed. She couldn't say exactly what clued her in but Sookie withdrew her fingers from the Vampire's mouth moments before they both came, allowing Eric just enough time to bury his fangs into her throat as they did. He bucked and writhed as she now used both hands to grasp the vampire's wildly flexing backside and tease him with her nails there, digging in when he climaxed, his buttocks clenched hard as stone beneath her hands.

The blood that was washing down Eric Northman's throat burned and chilled him at the same time, tasted like what he remembered of fine mead and water from the purest springs taken after battle, completely quenching his thirst and making him wildly crave it at the same time - such a wondrous thing to enjoy that protecting the source was more important than risking True Death. He felt its energy flow through him like a river as it powered his orgasm, one that lingered and intensified as it continued and left him drained at the first instance of his expulsion. He lifted his head and screamed as it came to a close, his scrotum clenched tight, his eyes glazed and wild before he collapsed, remembering just in time to fall to Sookie's left and feeling the tug on his penis as he slid from her nether grasp as it relaxed but far more slowly. The last of his energy went into the grin that crossed his face as he fell onto his back, the still leaking cum from his flaccid shaft and leaving a wet trail across her hip and the dark, slick sheets. It dripped down his own slender hip in mimicry of the two trails of hybrid fairy blood staining his chin. Eyes closing, he was about to raise a finger to wipe it back into his mouth when he felt Sookie's tongue provide the service for him. Her fingers were gently stroking his stomach, easing the fading cramps as she made shushing sounds and stroked his splayed legs with her foot. What had left him very temporarily drained had left the fairy hybrid wild-eyed and flush.

At the sight of Sookie Stackhouse eagerly waiting for another round, Eric pushed himself back onto his side and did what he could for the moment as she lay back, suckling her breast and teasing her clit with his fingers. She was soaked with both their fluids, more Eric's than her own, and he had her writhing in moments, orgasming gently around his digits several times. He lifted his eyes to watch her as she throatily chanted his name and tilted her hips into his hand. He worked the third finger into her and she screamed, rising up, gripping his head to her breasts, and then collapsing into a whispering chant of his name in between groans and gasps. His fingers continued buzzing inside her as she clenched them tight, her heels pressing hard into the mattress as she tried to draw him in further. Eric grinned as she looked down at him then reached for his hand as it withdrew. She brought his hand up their bodies and made a silent request of him by stroking her tongue across his wrist.

Seconds later, the wrist was back at her lips, dripping with blood that had seen the Dark Ages, the Renaissance, the wars that had ravaged the entire world, and that now was about to be drawn willingly into her mouth. She gently nestled her lips around the wound and took a long drag of the peppered honey of Eric Northman's blood. It was to her throat what the feel of the silk was to the rest of her body, to her private regions what his orgasm had been. She felt her breasts tense, her nipples harden, and her internal muscles ripple with new energy… and then oddly enough… somehow, felt Eric's erection begin to stir. Her eyes widened and closed at the sensation, for a wild moment wishing she was the one who could plunge herself into him. She smirked around the wound but felt it already beginning to close. She must have taken almost a pint of his blood, enough to certainly restore her own – and with a much higher octane. Sookie let his wrist slip from her mouth and kissed it as Eric settled down atop her in part, his head on her breasts where he could best listen to her heart and her breath while she stroked his hair.

They said nothing, not needing to, until Eric finally raised his head from between her caressing hands, traces of blood lined his eyes and she could tell looking down at him, like a six-foot-four toddler in need of a nap, that dawn was near. She fingered his mouth, wiping off traces of blood for him to lick from them, before he pulled himself up to the pillows. "We will talk when I wake but I cannot rest until I tell you that that was - was-."

"It's all right, Eric, I know - trust me, I know. I mean… I've only been with a vampire – but I know right now there is nothing in this world or any other like being with you. I feel like I just won every lottery in the world."

"… and I the same, Miss Stackhouse." Eric eased himself back over, pulling her with him. "Call Pam if you need anything else. She won't like it but she'll know if she's bringing you food here that you wouldn't be inviting her here if you'd staked me… and she'll get over her animosity. There's no one else I trust to know where my home is… and consider yourself welcome to explore it while I rest. I'm sure you'll find it quite interesting."

Sookie smiled, gently stroking his chest, "I might just do that but the first thing I'm gonna' do is get a little cleaned up… well, a lot cleaned up." She giggled and grinned and slid her tongue past his lips, the fading taint of each other's blood flavoring the lingering kiss. She held the kiss until she felt the sleep of death take her vampire lover. She wiggled out from beneath the last grasp he had on her and dropped to the floor, searching the closet and finding another long robe to wrap around herself before she headed downstairs, put out the fire they had left burning in their haste to get to the bedroom, and then grabbed the bag of clothes Pam had so grudgingly dropped off hours ago. Moments later she was naked in the huge bath, her mind full of the memories of the past few hours and a cloudy swirl of disbelief. She had a moment of pique as she looked over at the phone on a stand next to the tub, wishing she had her cell phone with her so that she could take a post-sex picture of herself and then send it to Bill. If he hadn't been to Eric's house at all, he'd damn well figure out where she was by the look on her face.

Sookie remained in the tub until the water became lukewarm, exiting it reluctantly then with a sudden smile of inspiration.

Eric, of course, lay where she had left him, sprawled on the king size bed - with his lips where her tongue had left them. She eased herself onto the side of the bed, balancing the pan of warm, soapy water carefully, within arm's reach but far enough away from her that her movements wouldn't disturb it. She squeezed the washrag out with one hand and happily set about her task, bathing the naked vampire before her slowly, gently, and indulgently, learning every magnificent line of his body and still charged up enough with his blood to move him as she needed. She held her lip in her teeth as she turned him over and took her time with the rag tracing the fine curve of his backside and thighs, moving her hands over the smooth, well-muscled expanse of his back as the water ran down to the slick sheets. An hour had gone by before she decided she was finished. She dumped the bathwater and hunted in Eric's room again until she found the fresh linens, then used the last of her vampire-borrowed strength to change the sheets, moving Northman from one side of the bed to the other like an aide moving an unconscious patient. Hungry again, she finished off the last of the pizza then went about tidying up, breaking down the box and looking through her newly retrieved bag of clothing and deciding that Eric and Pam had left Ginger with **some** sense. Satisfied, she at last shed the second robe she had borrowed and climbed into the king-sized bed with its newly changed red silk sheets, and rested her head on the chest of the Viking vampire, almost as needful as he of rest. In moments, she was peacefully asleep, her dreams no better than her reality had been a few hours ago.


	6. Chapter 6

A frown of curious disappointment momentarily lined Eric Northman's features when awareness, ferried by nightfall, returned to his immortal body, warmed on one side by the small form of Sookie Stackhouse resting beneath his right arm and against his body between his shoulder and knees. One of her legs was carelessly cast over the shallow depth of his hip, her warm toes where nestled between his thighs. He pulled her gently closer, not waking her - and her foot slid down so that her instep tucked neatly between his knees as she wiggled closer to him in response.

The disappointment was a minor one but a mystery. His last thoughts before dawn claimed him were of waking to the scent of their lovemaking surrounding them; instead he could smell nothing but fine soap and fresh linens. Surrendering to his confusion, he took a last moment to kiss the top of Sookie Stackhouse's head before any other sense could distract him from the sensation and then opened his eyes. They narrowed immediately at the sight of the red satin covering him and the telepath. He lifted the corner of the sheet and found the matching one beneath it and turned his head to see the pillowcases had been changed, too. A slow smile that mixed affection and a new disappointment lifted his lips. Sookie had changed the bed linens soiled by their escapades and there would have been no point doing that had she not only cleaned herself but him as well as he lay dormant.

The thought of her hands involved in such a task sent the expected ripple of arousal through him. She'd had enough of his blood to be able to move him however she'd needed to bathe him – at the next opportunity, if she was inclined to be so solicitous – she'd have to show him her technique for bathing a slumbering, helpless, sex-coated vampire. He wondered if Pam was going to give up her fears now since the most vicious thing she had applied to his inert form was a washcloth, scented soap, and those lovely, delicate, talented little hands. A growl rumbled deep in his chest and his eyes narrowed slightly. He ran his hand slowly up and down her back.

Sookie Stackhouse smiled against the cool hardness of the chest beneath her cheek and listened to the vampiristic growl fading away beneath her ear. She breathed in once and lifted her head. The arm stretched across him lifted and her hand began stroking his left side gently. "Mmmmm…. You sounded like a great big, dangerous kitty cat."

"Dangerous to everyone but you, I assure you. How did you sleep?"

"I'll put it this way: you slept a little bit better but not much. I didn't think being that exhausted and that happy at the same time was possible."

"Well, then think how sore you would be without having taken my blood." He smiled slyly at the darkening of her cheeks. "Blushing so easily, Lover? Hmmm, I can't imagine what shades you were turning when you took the care to bathe me and change the bedclothes. … or was it easier to take intimate liberties with me while I was totally at your mercy?"

Sookie's eyes flashed upward and felt the heat of a sudden blush. "I'm gonna' guess you liked the thought of my doing it just as much as I enjoyed making sure you were all nice and clean." Sookie pulled herself up and placed herself higher up and closer to his face. The hand that had been toying with his flank moved downward, the fingers lingering to play in the curved hollow of his hips and the lowest ridges of his abdomen.

With a shudder and a grumble of regret, the vampire captured the hand now teasing across the lower part of his stomach, just shy of the triangle of fine golden hairs, and raised it to his lips. "You would be right. I laid here before you woke and tried to imagine what I missed of efforts; you'll have to show me if I was right that next time we coat one another with passion." This time it was Sookie who growled and shuddered, lifting to draw her lips over the blond vampire's. He accepted her tongue eagerly when it stroked him for entrance but he took hold of her face gently when she raised her head to breathe again.

Eric Northman drew a breath to release it in a slow, contemplative sigh, turning onto his side and sliding down so that Sookie slid off of him and they lay face-to-face. "Much as I would love to spend the rest of my nights having sex with you, being bathed by your powerful little hands, and feeding from that lovely throat, we have to move from my…" the self-assured smirk she recalled so clearly briefly, irresistibly manifested a few inches from Sookie's face, "from my "Fuck Me" bed eventually and decide what comes next in as much as it is in our power."

Sookie looked into the pale blue eyes so close to her own, choosing her first battle of the moment. As much as she wanted to have Eric's help figuring out what to do next, there was also the battle she found herself fighting to simply keep her hands off of him now that she… well… Eric would tell her – had finally come to her senses. His blood was raging around in her veins now, once again warm, seemingly demanding to be as close to its source as possible. But as he had said, they couldn't spend the rest of their time together in hiding having sex. Arrogant bastard that he was, and that she was finally admitting to herself that she enjoyed, he was very certainly aware of the effect he was having on her.

Eric maneuvered so that he had hold of both of Sookie Stackhouse's hands, wishing they had the liberty of letting them roam and distract them both into totally unproductive but highly enjoyable behaviors. Sookie closed her eyes and forced her libido to settle down, thinking of dirty dishes at Merlotte's, the last puddle of sick she had stepped in out in the parking lot, Jason's laundry the last time he had shot and cleaned a boar (she'd given up and thrown those out after the third washing). When her libido had settled down almost completely, she threw the final buck of cold water on it - picturing Bill Compton as he confessed to letting two redneck jackasses batter her nearly to death. The thought knocked her sex drive back into submission even while she lay naked on red silk sheets inches away from Eric Northman, secure in the knowledge that once this was all over she could damn well have him whenever she wanted. That thought satisfied her enough for the moment… and with that came the realization that being with Northman like this felt so right and so natural she could lay here with him naked and still have her mind on other things when needed.

"Well, there's Jason. I should tell him I'm alive. It all happened so fast with Russell I didn't even get to tell him I was a … well, that I'm… more different than we thought." She rolled her eyes and sniffed.

Eric brought their linked hands up and nestled them beneath his chin. His hands were so large, however, that he was able to extend one finger to lift Sookie's chin to face him more directly. "Why do you do that? Hesitate to call yourself a fairy?"

"Because it sounds ridiculous to me. Too many fairy tales growin' up, I guess."

Despite his more platonic intentions at the moment, Eric couldn't stop another smirk coming to his lips. "Oddly enough, I have come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as too much fairy tail or is that not what you meant?"

Sookie giggled and reached down to finger and pinch the delectable vampire tail that was now hers to finally enjoy in turn. "Well, that's more than even, trust me." The vampire tail around here makes for a happy … end, too." She smiled at her own joke and their mouths met again before Eric forced himself to pull back with a groan of regret and another promise to himself that he would make sure they had a long time to continue this at their leisure at some point.

"In any case, don't be beguiled by your memories, Sookie. The Fae can be quite formidable. Roused, you can be quite formidable in particular. I was as proud as I was surprised when I saw you dispatch Russell."

"Then I guess you'll forgive me for sayin' so but I wish I'd zapped him into oblivion when I did zap him. It would have spared you Godric askin' you not to kill him if he was already dead and I wouldn't have to have in the back of my mind now somebody dragging him out. Damn it, Eric, even if he doesn't get out of there in my lifetime, he's gonna' come after you and do worse to you than you did to him. Godric's essence or his ghost or whatever you saw would know that. Why would he want you to risk yourself? He knew you wouldn't have had any intention of ending yourself – that Russell could still come after you – and that Russell was totally crazy."

It was Northman's turn to look troubled and confronted out loud by questions he had been asking himself since the night they had encased Russell and Sookie had disappeared. Pam had tried to ask him the same things but he had silenced her or ignored her or occupied himself away from her. He was hiding and part of him was raging against it – but, on the other hand, there was no point in battling something so unanswerable. Why he was allowing Sookie to ask him these things when he'd dismissed Pam he also found unsettling, more proof that Sookie was more to him than he thought he could ever allow any other being to be aside from a child or a maker. Her eyes were still boring into him, albeit gently, and with the understanding that he'd been wrestling with all those things himself and while she had been gone and come to no conclusions. She freed her hand to stroke his face and smiled when he took in a breath to let it out in a sigh and close his eyes beneath her touch.

"Maybe Godric's gonna', I don't know, try to help him from… wherever he is."

Northman's eyes remained shut as he spoke. "Russell accused me of being mad. He couldn't see Godric but I have no doubt that I did."

Sookie shook her head even though he couldn't see her. "I don't either. It wasn't long ago I just thought I was crazy and alone being so strange, and look at me now – finding out I'm a… fairy who's working for a shifter, if he'll still let me have my job, and who's been hunted by werewolves, and who's ended up in bed with a vampire. I got no reason to doubt you saw Godric in some way – and if you're thinkin' maybe you were crazy from the sun, I doubt it. You would've gone the other way if that were the case, done Russell in right then and there, either let him burn or let me stake him, 'cause you knew I would have." Sookie continued stroking the blond vampire's face, feeling more motherly than womanly despite their nakedness.

That Eric hadn't even smirked when she mentioned being in bed with a vampire told her how long and how deeply he'd been wrestling with the round of questions she'd presented, perhaps even his own sanity just a bit. Sookie suddenly tensed just slightly, remembering the vision Claudine had shared, that in it she had been holding Eric's head and trying, maybe, to heal him. In the next moment, she hoped, with a bit of panic, the same thing hadn't occurred to Eric. She worked to get the panic under control instantly, remembering that Eric's blood was in her now, that he could sense her feelings and her whereabouts and that she was now a willing participant. Well, not at the moment exactly. By the same token, she didn't want to lie to him either if he felt it and he asked. Eric said nothing however, either having felt it and guessed its source and chosen to remain silent or simply having had enough of the distance between them, he suddenly drew her closer, his eyes never opening. Sookie wiggled her hand beneath his neck and the pillow and slid the other beneath his arm to draw her fingers in lazy patterns across his back. "Tell me something, you big, very big, Viking Vampire, am I the most complicated mess you've ever been in?"

His chin resting on her curls, Eric drew himself away from the scent of fairy blood so easily detected through her thin scalp and focused his heightened senses on the new and pleasant feel of her hot fingertips tracing over his skin. He couldn't recall the last time someone had touched him in **that** manner. It merely distracted him from his troubled thoughts at first and then seemed to take their power away slowly and inexorably. He moaned quietly and despite just having awoken felt the sweeping, warm, greed-inspiring strokes of her small hand nearly drawing him into an unneeded down time. With effort, Eric rallied and sent his mind back to her teasing question.

"You are in contention, lover. I had much to learn when I was first with Godric. Being a vampire is not easy before one knows the rules, even when we brought fewer rules on ourselves because we could move about more easily and take advantage of a human race that was ruled by any number of superstitions. I once had to stop a war because I had taken a woman to bed who did not inform me she was royalty. Her guards betrayed her, her betrothed found us, killed her while I was at rest but too close to nightfall. I awoke, killed him, learned he was a prince, was then found by the woman's father and brother and would have had to kill them except Godric arrived just in time to glamour them both. He convinced them we were emissaries from a nearby nation and forced me to work as a political envoy and sort out a new peace accord that involved the next woman in line and refused to let me glamour any of the parties involved."

Sookie tucked her head further into his chest, fascinated. "Why did he do that?"

"So I would learn from it and in the end I was grateful. It was my introduction to dealing with political messes; it serves me well still. That was especially true when I was no longer in Godric's company very often. I had to learn that one could not survive by superior strengths alone. Intelligence still has merit even in the most superior predator."

Sookie smiled against his chest and looked up. "I can see why you'd miss him so much, somebody who cared about you enough to teach you things like that, who was still helping you track down Russell and his weres for killin' your family almost a thousand years after you lost them. I'm still sorry I didn't get to know him better. He saved me from being raped and he let me see another side to you."

Northman didn't respond and, in fact, slowly turned his head away from where he could easily see her. Sookie lay still for a few long minutes, wondering if she'd somehow said the wrong thing, if Eric – while being fine with her bathing him while he lay helpless – had loathed being reminded of his moment of emotional vulnerability. She maneuvered herself back a little against his unresisting arm and raised her head to look at him, saw that he was laying with his head turned and staring in the direction of the bedroom door but likely wasn't truly seeing it. Sookie lay watching him, still snuggled up against his side. She didn't move, giving him whatever space his silence was demanding until he turned back and pulled her up to kiss her.

"Then perhaps I should think of you as his last gift to me; there are few others whose loss would have revealed a side of me that your nurturing instincts would have found so stimulating."

Sookie offered him a sad, comprehending, and grateful smile. "Looks like I owe him, too."

Eric looked away again but this time there was a small smile on his face and Sookie slid back as he turned again to face her, pulling her lightly into his arms, leaving room between them so that they could still look at each other easily. His cool blue gave wandered everywhere but her eyes for several long moments and she could tell he was wrestling with some decision, was unsure about telling her something. Decision made a few seconds later, he reached up with his top arm and held the left side of her face in his hand, the smile migrating to more of the smirk with which she was familiar. Her arms returned to their prior placements, between his neck and the pillow and to stroking what she could of his back in their now looser embrace. He did not let himself be distracted this time, however, and his eyes bored gently into hers. "Godric's refusal to let me meet the True Death with him enabled me to be here when it was time to safeguard you from Russell and your trust allowed me to have my revenge for my family."

Sookie's eyes narrowed slightly. "I don't know quite how you figure that, Eric. I wasn't exactly in on what you were doing until Pam told me you'd hooked yourself up to Russell and that was how you were gonna' kill him for good. I realized you'd been full of it at Russell's looney bin the whole time once I saw you out there. I sort of knew something was weird when you were stroking my hair so gentle while you had your fangs in my neck – and that you were barely feeding on me even though I supposedly had this amazing fairy blood. Tell me something, Eric, did you make your plan figurin' I'd come out there and drag you back in?"

Eric looked away from here for a moment, blinked once and slowly then tilted his head back. "I always knew it was a distinct possibility but if I saved you and rid the world of Russell I would have met True Death satisfied that it was a worthy one. Of course, once I was inside I was conscious enough to appreciate the moment it was all truly worthwhile – hearing you tell Compton to bite you so that your blood could heal me. I'm sure even your blood tasted bitter to him at that moment." The smile that moved across his lips as he spoke drew a giggle from the telepath.

"I think he choked on it a little, yeah, but I was past carin' at that point, but none of getting' to that point was my doing, Eric. I don't know why you think it was."

Northman traced her lips with his thumb, her eyes closing as he did. "You trust me. We know that now but you have all along without saying so, maybe without fully knowing it yourself. You and I agreed on this plan, you enabled it long before Russell took you, knowing I'd save you or die for good trying."

Sookie reared back from him, her arm withdrawing from beneath his to push back from his sculpted, firm chest. "That's totally impossible, Eric. I never agreed to anything like that. I'd sure as hell remember if you got me to go along with being kidnapped by a psychopath and we both know you sure as hell couldn't have glamoured me."

Eric's gaze remained fixed on her, cold and warm at the same time, amused and deadly serious as well, but mostly calm and assured in a way that only being over a thousand years old could produce. "Do we, Miss Stackhouse? Do we? Do we **both** know for absolute certain that I am unable to glamour you?" The palm braced against his chest remained where it was as Sookie continued to look him in the eye, mildly indignant and totally confused. She continued staring at him in perplexed denial for several moments and suddenly the air left her lungs in a grunting huff and she fell back against the red satin pillows feeling just slightly better than when she'd almost been drained. My God. She told him. He knew… He knew.

Sookie lay still for several moments, gathering her wits about her, and then rolled back up on her side to face Eric. "Do it. Go on. I know you. You wouldn't have done it without leaving a way."

It was all the encouragement Northman needed as he met her eyes and held her chin as her breathing slowed and her mental shields fell away. Once he was past them it was even easier than it was with any normal human (with the sad exception of Ginger whose last name even he didn't recall right now) since Sookie's mind was already adept at this kind of contact. He left her with one word and then withdrew, waiting for a focused light to come back to her wide and dark gaze.

Sookie felt the word race around in her mind, opening its doors and rewiring willingly severed connections, a single word that let her know how wise some part of her had been to trust Eric Northman long before she had ended up in his den with her legs wrapped around him – a single, simple, powerful word: Remember. It resonated in her head in Eric's best "Fuck Me" voice. She closed her eyes, opened them onto his typical self-assured smirk that somehow did have an edge of question to it, and sighed slowly as her hand that had been pushing him back rose to run its fingers questioning over his cheek as if he were something she was trying to perceive as real. "Jesus Christ – you can fly?"


	7. Chapter 7

Eric Northman bit back a grin. She'd surprised him again – that out of all the things now returned to her memory – the fact that he could fly was the first thing that deserved comment. So practical. So unfocused on her own contributions to ending Edgington… and so marvelously un-amazed by the trust she had shown him then. So… Sookie. He gently took hold of the hand touching his face and kissed her fingers slowly. "When warmer weather takes hold, I'll introduce you to the real mile high club."

Sookie glared at him and huffed. "You're flattering yourself and your anatomy somethin' powerful if you think sex with you could make me forget I'm five thousand feet up in the air, Eric Northman."

He suckled one of the fingers still in his hand and looked up at her coyly. "Wouldn't you want to see if I could rise twice to the challenge? We could do it over a dense cloudbank, perhaps with a thunderstorm going on beneath us. You would seem to be only a few hundred feet abo-." He smiled as she pressed the rest of her fingers hard across his lips.

"You are not gonna' distract me by talkin' crazy, at least not right now and no - that is not a "yes" to having sex while flyin' over a thunderstorm with no airplane." The smile on her face that had become almost painful to talk around slowly faded and she sobered, her mind going back to the revelation she had just experienced. "I can't believe I told you I could be glamored when I did. I guess it must have been because I was mad at Bill and desperate to save him at the same time."

Eric, having moved her hand from his lips, kissed the back of her fingers once again. "I won't deny those things were part of it but I prefer to think most of your sharing that with me was you beginning to come to your senses about who could protect you, who was clever enough,… who was strong enough,… who was motivated enough. There are others who hold power over me, Sookie, because of political status – but Godric is gone – so there is no one whose power is absolute. Lorena is gone as well, but Bill is young, he's powerless politically yet – if he doesn't get himself staked – his best strategy is to disappear, age into some strength, and maybe some wisdom, and never to darken your doorstep again."

Sookie's eyes flashed upward. "Fine by me. All he had to do was tell me what he thought I was, what Sophie Ann wanted, and then tell me he'd do his best to protect me."

Eric reached up, dragging his fingers down her shoulder lightly. "Forgive me for saying so because you've had so much pain because he didn't - but I prefer you in my bed instead of Compton's. I've wanted you from the moment I saw you – even before I knew Compton was unqualified to protect you. Sadly we both discovered he was unworthy of you at all."

Sookie moaned and closed her eyes as Eric Northman's cool fingers ran down the length of her arm and back up, her skin tingling behind his strokes and ahead of them in anticipation, including her tightening nipples as his hand traveled slowly back toward her shoulder. "I don't want to talk about Bill anymore. I'm just glad I was mad at him enough to have one more reason to trust you. And I'm glad you got to deal with Russell and that I agreed to help – even if I didn't know I had."

The smile still lingering on Northman's lips faded and the hand that had been straying dangerously close to her nipples recaptured her own along with his other hand. His eyes closing, he lowered his chin on the pillow until his mussed hair was grazing the underside of the woman's throat. Her eyes opened slowly at the tickling sensation and his voice as it rumbled against her chest. "And for that, Sookie Stackhouse, you will have my truly eternal gratitude."

Sookie looked down, her stomach flipping slightly. She wiggled to free her hand from Eric's grip, bringing her arms out to wrap one around his bared shoulders and the other around his head as she pulled him to her breasts. Her lips brushed through his hair to kiss the top of his head and she wriggled the rest of her body closer to him, smiling unseen as his partial erection twitched against her thigh. Eric felt her voice as much as heard it when she spoke. "Well, given how things turned out and what you were tryin' to do, you're welcome."

Eric took an unneeded breath and settled further into her embrace, savoring the feel of her after so long desiring it, the pounding of her heart filling his head as they lay for an amount of time neither could recall later. Sookie frowned in curiosity after they lay so entwined for a long while, wondering if Eric had gone into one of those strange trance-like vampire downtimes. It was as if he was seeking comfort and not just what she would have expected at this point, her companionship and secondarily (she hoped and assumed) her presence in his bed. Deciding to leave the matter for later, she settled herself further into the luxurious bed until she had nearly drifted back to sleep. Just before she did, the Nordic vampire shifted against her gently, raising red-rimmed eyes that caught hers just before he ran his tongue gently along the underside of her jaw. She jerked back to full wakefulness with a smile, moaning and immediately starting to become wet elsewhere. Eric caught scent of it in an instant and she felt his hand slide down her stomach and his long fingers tease at her entrance. His thumb rolled across her clitoris a moment later and she bucked and squealed. Her eyes closed when his voice sounded coolly right next to her ear. "Now that you've expressed your receptiveness to my gratitude, Miss Stackhouse, is there anywhere else you'd like to show me I'm welcome?"

Sookie rolled her hips against the gentle invasion of his hand, her eyes rolling back in her head. She let him tease her for a few moments more and then turned over on her side and reached down to gently take hold of his erection, her strokes - as light as his were firm - were having just as intense an effect at this point. He slid his finger in slightly farther and found the spot that he knew would make her come in short order, not slowing down the pumping motion as he came to his knees beside her, slipping his penis from her grasp with a small groan then turning his head to show her his fangs were down.

That was no surprise, of course, but the sudden realization of where he intended to bite her made her tense slightly in anticipation. She moved her legs farther apart and raised herself up onto her elbows, turned on even more by the better view she was now afforded of Eric Northman about to bite her as close to her sex as he could while she came. She watched, mesmerized, as he suddenly raised the arm nearest her and bit into his wrist, offering her his bleeding wounds. His voice was coarse and sharp when he spoke, his eyes glazed and burning with a multitude of desires. "Not yet… not yet."

Sookie pushed herself up farther and seized his wounded limb to her mouth, bracing herself with one arm, knowing full well for what she was waiting. He'd bitten himself deeply so that the healing would take more time and as his blood seeped into her mouth, he smiled anew at the surge of lust erupting through her… and then his head snapped down, his fangs piercing her thigh as his fingers stroked hard over the special spot he had just been teasing. Piercing her skin only, he exercised every bit of control at his disposal and drew her blood into his waiting mouth only when the full fury of her orgasm struck.

The walls of her sex closing in on Eric Northman's fingers were mimicked instantly by her lips as she at last sucked greedily and forcefully on the bleeding wrist of her vampire lover, feeling the powerful effect of her own orgasm on his system. Sookie grabbed his wrist with both hands, knowing full well he could support her weight as she hung suspended from the arm off which she was so eagerly, almost desperately, drawing in his blood.

His expression primal, his eyes narrowed, and panting because it was still such a habit when so powerfully aroused, Eric straightened, her blood scoring his chin, and lifted her onto his thighs as he swung upright, somehow still letting her retain her mouth's grasp on his wrist. She took his cock into herself in one thrust, but with enough presence of mind to tighten down on him immediately, preventing him from coming with all the force her Fae/human body, now powered by the blood of an ancient vampire, could.

Eric growled as they began to move together, holding her to himself with his free arm, loving the irony as his own blood gave the strength to so thoroughly engage his desires. She locked her legs around his waist, setting the pace of their sex with the rhythmic clenching of her thighs; her goal was now to prolong the pleasure for them both even though it had already brought her to the verge of screaming moments beforehand.

She gyrated her hips in tiny circles, never taking her eyes off Northman's face as she looked at him over his arm. She slowed her intake of his blood to just enough to keep the wounds open and then unlocked her legs and put her heels down on either side of them, pushing against him and moving him back down to the bed. She continued rotating her sex as she stretched out over him, remembering now how she had done so back in Jackson when he had demanded a kiss.

For a woman who had had so little experience with sex in her own short life, Sookie Stackhouse was proving she could drive a thousand-year-old Viking Vampire mad. Perhaps it had something to do with her being Fae, her body could read his and respond to it like her mind could read those of most other beings. The clenching of her sex and the rotation of her hips around his throbbing cock had left Eric Northman in fugue state of lust and rapture. His narrow hips twitched upward each time her inner walls relaxed, a different part of his cock stimulated slightly more each time because of her gyrations. But the gyrations had lost some of their regularity as she responded to them herself for the same reasons. He loved the sound as she raggedly gasped through her nose, her lips still sealed around his seeping wounds, as she began to lose control of the situation.

Knowing she was too close herself to toy with him any longer, Sookie clamped down on him at his next thrust, clenching his member tight for seconds that seemed to last forever, and then let him release, drawing his blood into her mouth at full force as he did so. What started out as her name on his lips ended as a guttural groan of pleasure as she followed his example and took his orgasm and his blood into her body at the same time.

Both the vampire and the Fae/Human woman would have happily spent eternity in the long seconds that followed but their bodies, having artfully played each other to exhaustion, even for the vampire, gave out. Sookie Stackhouse collapsed on top of Eric Northman, spent and giddy, dazed and grateful, and wondering how fast she could recover for the next time. Taking a breath, she kissed the tiny wounds now fading beneath her closed lips, and pushed herself up and then back, lifting her hips and then falling over as the last bit of strength left her for the moment. She was vaguely aware of Northman turning to face her and looked down to see his penis completely flaccid for the first time in her memory. They lay in sated, blissful silence for several long moments, coming down from a sex-high that was for Eric Northman what it was for Sookie Stackhouse.

Reality came for them, however, as time cruelly refused to stop passing.

"It'll be dawn soon."

The voice that sounded in Sookie's ears sounded distant even while coming from her own mouth, perhaps because she wished reality was a faraway thing. Eric had finally known her in the way he'd been hoping almost since he'd first laid eyes on her, certainly since he'd found out she was, at least in part, Fae, and very certainly since her blood had passed in quantity over his lips the night that he'd taken out Russell Edgington. Now that he'd indulged in it by more than sips to lure Edgington to his doom and not by desperate gulps simply to heal from almost bringing him to it – Eric knew the full power, the full texture, and the near divinity of taste that Fae blood, even mixed with human, offered.

Sookie pushed her head farther back into the pillow, squirming her hips slightly, hearing Eric growl softly as she did. She was still feeling the walls of her sex slowly shrinking back to its normal size. Good God, Eric was huge – definitely in proportion to his six foot four body. She'd seen Eric naked and fully erect before, not long before her ill-fated trip to Jackson to hunt for what turned out to be Bill's useless, lying carcass, but actually... accommodating... his Viking-sized cock was another issue, although one she tackled with glee. She wondered idly if the fact that he was that big even made her ever wetter... kind of like an even exchange sort of thing, her body responding proportionally to his size just at sight of …. Sookie's thoughts descended into a wave of giggles much the same as when she'd been thinking of Jason handing out bakery tickets to his bedroom.

Eric lowered his head to watch her, smiling dimly. Semi-intoxicated with the glut of part-fairy blood circulating through him, he couldn't get enough of the sound of her laughter or her heartbeat, delighting in the confusion that they calmed and excited him at the same time in any state but especially in this one.

Eric pushed himself off his side to fall onto his back, dragging her over so that she rested against him, her leg over his thigh and her hand working its way down his stomach to his abdomen and back again through his thatch to stroke his slowly recovering cock gently, her eyes traveling to the alarm clock. They didn't have much time but enough for maybe two more go 'rounds, especially if she had another few draws of Eric's blood. Hell, she'd have to clean them both up again at this rate anyway. Happily resolved to playing bathing nurse a dirty, helpless, sex-soaked vampire , she was surprised when Eric's fingers suddenly covered hers as they were ministering to his sex, drawing her small hand away to lift it to his nose and take a long slow whiff of their mingled scents. She thought that was his only reason and expected to resume her ministrations but he brought her fingers to his lips, kissed them and then pressed her hand against his broad chest.

The Fae blood had been nearly willed out of his thousand-year-old system when he pulled her up to face him. His eyes were clear when she met them, a worried half-smile curving the lips that had been servicing her so wickedly in all kind of ways through the night.

"It is almost dawn," he echoed, regret entering his tone. "We don't have much time."

Sookie's smile combined petulance and whimsy. "At least it's winter. You won't be out as long as you might be."

The arm beneath the woman pulled her up closer to make sure he could look her in the eye. "I'm thinking longer term than that, Lover. I know what I believe we should do and we're both going to hate it now... but we need all the advantages we can get."

Sookie let the sigh that she'd been expecting to heave for hours past her lips. This was it. This was the moment where everything they had to deal with was going to start to close in around them. It wasn't Eric's fault, it was who she was and what she was, and what they had to do to deal with it now that her secret (one she hadn't known she had – thank you very much) was out and her people had come for her, too. Resting her head down on the cool chest beside her, Sookie's hand grasped the one he still held more tightly.

"Okay then... what am I supposed to do that I'll hate... besides getting up out this bed?"

Eric smiled thinly, still smelling the glut of vampire blood that was in the veins of the woman beside him, wishing its strength would stay with her until she could take it from him again. The smile faded, however, fading in its own way to match his deathly pallor. "The best way we have to deal with whatever's going to be happening is for you to go back. You should be safe in the Fae Realm, especially if they believe you're there to learn to be more like them. As I said before – you're an anomaly to them, a fairy hybrid who has lived hidden among humans and other supernaturals, and who has safely kept intimate company with vampires. It might not be Claudine but they want to use you for something; there's something they need to learn perhaps – and we need to know what that is."

A look of disappointment and disgust and resignation twisted Sookie's expression. "... and in the meantime, I could still be learning from them about what I can do... and maybe they'll teach me more than I'm supposed to know." Sookie moved to sit up, taking the red satin sheet with her to cover her nakedness, a small, unconscious acknowledgment that she knew the world was against their remaining in this bed forever. She new better than anyone that if Claudine or any of the others wanted to pop into existence right here in Eric's otherwise tightly sealed bedroom, they could. … and Eric had responsibilities that would demand his departure regardless. She could go back to her life certain that Eric would do everything in his power to keep her safe, that she had someone who honestly cared for her, but it would just be a matter of time before whatever agenda the Fae might have would affect them. If Eric had the knowledge to deal with the Vampire world, they needed a way to know the Fae world as well... and there was only one way for them to do that.

"It makes sense... I hate it, but you're right. We have to do this for each other. The first thing I'll try and find out is if there's any way to stop us from poppin' in wherever we want so that you can make this place safe. Pam's right... not that I would have but I could have staked you right where you were."

Suddenly there were tears of worry in her eyes and she shook a little when she realized just how vulnerable her Viking-sized Viking could be to her kind. Eric growled slightly when he saw the tears, wiping them away quickly and gently. "Don't do that. We have time according to Claudine – we have at least one destiny we know of together."

Sookie watched him as he moved up beside her, the sheet sliding down his torso as he leaned against the headboard. "I don't even like the sound of that. If you end up in some mess where you need "need me the most" then that can't be good because I do **not** for one second think that Claudine was talking about your sex life."

A deep laugh escaped the vampire at that – that Sookie could make him do so seconds after he was wiping worried tears from her face only made him treasure her more. He reached over to pull her closer so that they sat side by side on the huge bed, the hands between them entwined. "Surprisingly Miss Stackhouse, I hadn't considered that aspect of the prophecy... in that context it is far less worrisome, is it not?"

Sookie rolled her eyes. "If it meant just that – it would also mean that your sex life was important to a whole realm of supernatural beings and then you'd really be unbelievable." She offered him an accusatory smile and then sighed again. "I'll do what I can to figure out what they want and I won't let them mess with my head. You're the only person in my whole life whose told me the truth, even if you did have to tell me only half of it or only tell me it and then I had to let you make me forget it. Shit, how can somebody who reads minds get jerked around so much? Jason didn't even tell me he'd killed Tara's boyfriend and he's only human... and not tellin' me was as good as lyin' when it's something like that... even if it wasn't my best friend's boyfriend he'd killed. I'm sorry... I'm just ramblin' about my ditzy brother and we probably got a whole mess of trouble waitin' for us, especially you."

"As long as you're my reward – I think I can deal with almost anything, Miss Stackhouse."

Sookie sighed, her eyes closing and then opening slowly, locking with the blond vampire's as she lifted up and rolled over so that she was straddling his thighs, his head cradled in her hands and a small smile coming to her face. "I wish I could read your mind, Eric Northman. It's not that I don't believe what you're saying but it'd be nice to hear thoughts like that rattlin' around in someone's head."

Returning the gesture, Eric's hand bypassed the far more tempting target of her exposed breasts. He pulled her forward into a kiss and then pushed her back mere inches, his eyes drawing her in, offering her the same gaze as if he were glamoring her although making no attempt to do so. "Were you able to read my thoughts, my dear Sookie, you'd have no doubt about where you stand, where you would be safe, and where you would be cared for and protected, and fulfilled. Were you able to read my mind, you'd fear nothing."

Sookie stared at the vampire before her, her mind – if empty of Eric Northman's thoughts, still able to read his honesty and intentions with her heart. She thrust her lips against his, her tongue seeking entrance and sensing his fangs slip down on either side as he granted it. She raised her hips as his erection resurged and slowly took him, their mouths never parting. She slid down on him gently, the games of delightful torment left aside, wanting to cradle the physical essence of his manhood as deeply as she could within herself, even as she accepted the more ethereal essence of his manhood into her heart.

She tilted her hips forward and back slowly, taking his hands from her face to hold them against her breasts as she moved above him, her inner thighs moving in time with his clenching hips. Vampire or not, the laws of physics were simply that she was doing most of of the work regardless, but the benefit of that was how long the two of them would last.

Sookie rode Eric to completion, their heads buried into each other's shoulders as he exploded within her once again and then fell back against the headboard and she fell back on her braced arms. Eric's member deflated slowly within her and she tightened her sex like a cocoon around it, stroking his chest as he did so and enjoying the sight of what had to be the most gorgeous creature she ever saw looking up at her with a post-coital smile working its way lazily across his lips. A frown came to her face, however, a few moments later, as her hands strayed over the broad chest before her.

"There's one more thing you need to do before I go back."

Eric met her gaze gently, hearing the dread in her voice. "What would that be, Lover?"

Sookie gathered his hands and smiled sadly. "You need to glamour me again. But this time I want you to make sure that I never say anything to Claudine or any of the rest of them about why I'm really there. I need you to put a... like... an invisible cork in my mouth because you know how I can be. Just fix me up so that I tell Claudine I came back, I apologized, we had lots of mind-blowing sex, and then I decided to go back because I felt more at home with the Fae and wasn't ready to leave yet. She should believe that. She kind of sprung comin' here on me."

Eric listened to her without expression, a thoughtful frown slowly touching his lips as she finished. "Well, I like the mind-blowing sex part of your explanation."

Sookie offered him a thin, teasing smile. "I had to be honest about something."

Eric returned the teasing smile and stroked the back of her hands with his thumbs; his expression took on a calculated tone. "Have you told them that you can be glamoured if you choose?"

"No. I almost did once but this little voice in the back of my head stopped me; I mean... uh... normally I don't do a really good job of listening to it but there I just suddenly got this feeling that they didn't need to know everything."

She giggled and leaned forward, kissing him again and then sitting back. "We don't have much time left before you're gone for the day. I got one more thing I want to ask you. Will you please look up Jason and tell him I'm all right? Just tell him I'll be back and tell him I'll fix him a rhubarb pie when I do. The rhubarb part is really important. When all this stuff started happenin' and we got mixed up with supernaturals, we kind of worked out a code between us – so if you tell him rhubarb pie, since I can't be glamoured without my say so, he'll know you're telling the truth."

Eric nodded slowly. "I will contact your brother. Do not worry. You must promise me something in return."

Sookie nodded slowly. "Go on."

"You must promise me that you will keep yourself safe, be suspicious of all you are told, and that the first thing you master as a Fae when you return, is how your kind moves from place to place." A ghost of a teasing smile came to his face. "I do not merely ask this so that you can appear in my bedroom at will but so that you can remove yourself from trouble either here or there if the need arises. If you feel threatened, come to me. The vampires nearly destroyed the Fae – unless they have developed some dramatic new powers – I will be able to protect you."

"All right, but if I zap myself back here and it's daylight, then what?"

"Vampires have revealed themselves to the human world, the Fae have not, go somewhere public and crowded. They will hopefully hesitate to use their powers. Hide until you can have my protection."

Sookie nodded and set her lips in a thin, firm line. "All right, that's what I'll do."

Eric nodded, his shoulders beginning to feel heavy as the nearness of dawn invading his being. "Good," he nodded, then offered her a tilted smile. "And if the mood to appear in my bedroom does occur, please consider yourself welcome." Sookie giggled, feeling his imposed and sudden exhaustion through the bond as she smiled down at him, finally moving to ease off of him, feeling his semi-flaccid member slide down her leg.

Eric moaned softly in disappointment at the loss of contact but put his mind back where it needed to be as he looked over at her kneeling beside him on the huge bed. "Sookie Stackhouse, look at me, see only me, hear only me."

Sookie fought him out of instinct for a moment and then saw only the startlingly blue eyes of her vampire lover and felt the cool wind of the North Sea stroke her bare body, contrasting the heat of loins that the sight also brought to her. As quickly, both sensations faded from her perception and all that remained was Eric Northman... Eric Northman and whatever he was about to ask of her or share with her. She sat perfectly still, her breathing slowing at the sound of his voice permeating her mind.

"Sookie Stackhouse, you hear me and only me."

"Yes."

"And are you ready to do whatever I say?"

"Yes."

"Excellent, Lover. I need you to protect us both."

"I'll do that, Eric. I'll keep you safe."

"You need only be cautious with your words, my shieldmaid. Return to the Fae, say only that we made peace from when you last left, gave into our passions repeatedly, but you then decided to return to the Fae, that they alone make you feel understood and at home. You must tell them that you feel wanted among them and wish to learn their ways. You will be telling them those things to guard yourself and those you care for and then you will learn all you can to make yourself as powerful as possible. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Then kiss me deeply and awake when you hear my fingers snap."

He, of course, snapped his fingers as their tongues met and Sookie pulled back with an accusatory glare on her face, swatting his chest but giggling. "You are unbelievable... and so's the fact I'm not mad at you for comin' around with my tongue in your mouth."

"You were unbelievable yourself, Miss Stackhouse. You break down my self-control at times, yet you have to let me break down yours. After existing so long, that challenge alone is enough to keep me intrigued with you."

Sookie's expression became gentle and thoughtful at that. She leaned forward and kissed him on her own just before he slid down back onto the bed then drew the sheet over him once he did, her fingers sliding back down his shoulders.

He reached out and captured her left hand hand, taking in a final sight of Sookie, naked, climbing over him and putting her feet back down on the cool, wooden floor. "One last thing, my dear, much as I love the idea of your hands all over my helpless body, leave me with the scent of our pleasures. I want it to cling to me as long as possible."

Sookie smiled thinly. "If I can't I guess it'll have to do and I guess I'll go back to wherever the Hell the Fae are and take a dip in the pond there after I talk to Claudine. That way if she's got some Fae power to let her sense you all over me, she will." Sookie glanced around and suddenly took her lower lip in her teeth. "Actually, Eric, you have to hang on for a few seconds more come to think of that." She released her lip and smiled guiltily. "Ginger left me clothes but I guess she thought I wasn't leavin' and she didn't bring me any shoes and I didn't have any on when I got here."

Eric fought his way back up to rest on his elbow and pointed at the desk. "Get me a piece of paper and pen from the desk."

Sookie did so, hurrying before Eric began bleeding from staying awake in the encroaching daylight. He took the pad from her and quickly wrote something on it before handing it and the pen back. Sookie glanced down and saw a string of numbers and Eric spoke before she could ask. "It's the code to go leave room. Enter it twice and press "Off". Then please come back up here, enter it once, press "On" and leave by your more... exotic means. As for shoes, Pam keeps a few things here in the closet across from my office."

Sookie nodded and leaned over him, her lips again remaining on his until Death had taken him for the day. She straightened and sighed, resigning herself to what she knew was the best course of action, even if it meant going back to the Fae. A slow smile came to her face as she remembered and in a small way hoped for Claudine's prophetic vision to come true. She wasn't fond of the Eric being in need for her more than he had ever been since that would likely mean he was in some sort of trouble, possibly on her behalf even, but that she would be there for him was at least some consolation.

Sookie grabbed a pair of sweatpants and sweater from the bag Pam had left and dressed quickly. Grabbing Eric's robe again, remembering the rest of the house was not as warm as he'd made the bedroom or his den, she walked over to the doorway, pad in hand, and looked at the security system panel. She keyed the string of seven numbers in twice, hit "Off", cringed and opened the door. Nothing happened. She sighed and headed downstairs, opening the door opposite his office.

Obviously the concept of "a few things" was different for vampires. There was a room behind the door that looked like a multi-department stockroom at Wal-Mart except for the price tags in triple digits. She gave up counting when she reached 30 in terms of pairs of shoes, finally locating a pair of black and gold ones with a more modest heel than all the others, no more than an inch or so. She slipped them on and the fit was near perfect. Of course, the fact she was going to vanish with them gave Pam a real reason to stake her. Sookie giggled at the sight of them with her sweatpants and turned to leave, shutting the door behind her.

The door to Eric's den lay open and she stood frozen for a moment, her eyes scanning the interior. Unable to stop herself, she entered. A few wafts of heat from the dying fire struck her face as she looked around again, her eyes stopping at the desk and focusing on the pair of scissors standing up in their holder. Giving into a sudden impulse, she snatched them up and glanced around again, smiling when she saw the tape dispenser and taking it, too.

Sookie was back in Eric's room a few moments later, standing next to the bed and brushing his hair back from his face. There was, of course, no response, but that was as she wished now. She stroked his hair back until it was smooth and flat and then lifted a long lock of it right above his left eye, the longest one she could find. She fiddled with it until she decided it was the right size... then retrieved the scissors and snipped the lock, holding it tight in her fingers until she could press it against the piece of tape she had pulled from the dispenser now on the nightstand. She lay another piece of tape over it and then thrust the now sealed lock of hair into her brassiere with a smile.

Reaching to her shoulder, she tugged down a much longer piece of her own and snipped it, making a similar object for Eric Northman, and leaving it next to the scissors and the dispenser and the pad onto which she written her own note now, one that simply read:

"Dear Eric, till whenever I'm back, you're with me, too. Sookie."

Dear Readers... thank you so much for your kind reviews and then your patience. You've been a source of real happiness that I could compartmentalize while I deal with the normal challenges of real life and an on-going situation of my mother's rapidly declining health. She's at home with me and what I can do to occupy my mind and time beside her is of great value to my own mental health. You've all been so wonderful to me that I will be forever grateful. I have NO CLUE if I might indulge again or when but this has been a great experience. If you want more of my writing and you're a 24 fan, check out the other two pieces I've written there. One of them is 30 chapters long and 150,000 plus words long! That'll keep you busy! :D But regardless, thank you again... and for your patience regarding my recent electronics crisis. Take care and have a great 2011. June is only 4 months away.

And PS... a big thank you to all the great TB/SVM fic writers who have helped me fill the gap, too!


	8. Chapter 8

Dear Readers: while I am flattered by your hopes that I will continue with this story, I explained in the last paragraph that this is where I am ending the story. When I write, I try to stick to as cannon as possible, hence the glamoring trick and Sookie's return to the Fae Realm. This was just my interlude between Seasons 3 and 4 of "True Blood". I am glad you would love to see this story continue but this was the ending I was heading for once I decided to continue it past the first chapter, which actually was planned as a one-shot!

As I said, I have some HUGE challenges awaiting me in the next few weeks/months/years and I wanted to make sure this story was given an end before those started in earnest which will be very, very shortly.

If and when I have another inspiration, I will be more than eager to share it with you. I would love for that to happen along with the opportunity to indulge, however, I have a very tenuous future before me and can't promise much beyond the fact that I would still love for that to happen.

Again...my best to all of you and thank you so much again!


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